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burst-of-iridescent · 3 years ago

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hey, i hope this doesn’t come across the wrong way, but i saw some of the posts you recently reblogged about yelena. i’m not very well informed on the aroace community and i have some genuine questions i was wondering if you could answer.

i thought yelena was only confirmed to be asexual not aro? so in that case what would be wrong with shipping her with someone romantically just not sexually? but if i am misremembering and she is aroace- does being aroace mean she would never enter a relationship with someone? can you be aroace and still marry and/or have a long term partnership with someone even if you don’t feel romantic or sexual attraction? could an aroace ever be in a relationship for someone if they only like them platonically but that other person likes them romantically?

sorry to dump such a long ask on you, feel free to ignore it if you want, it’s just hard to be to wrap my head around being aroace since i’m allo

hi! no worries at all anon, i'm more than happy to answer questions about being aromantic/asexual so long as they're in good faith. sorry it took me so long to get to this!

now, there have been claims that yelena is not aroace because she never explicitly says so in canon. but i think this is easily explained given the fact that the comics that introduced her came out in 1999, and asexuality and aromanticism is still so misunderstood and underrepresented today. the evidence for yelena being aroace is as follows:

1. in the comics, yelena is asked about being a lesbian and replied "i'm not a lesbian. i'm not...anything." i've seen people say that this could just be her being bi or pan or not having the words to describe her sexuality, but were this actually the intention, the writers could've just written yelena's lines as "i'm not just a lesbian. i'm...more than that" or something to that effect. it's disingenuous to argue that the words "i'm not...anything" fit being bisexual or pansexual more than it fits aromanticism & asexuality, which are the only sexualities with no attraction.

2. the writer of her comics, and co writer of the black widow movie, devin grayson, stated that yelena was "more likely to identify as asexual than to follow nat's romantic path". yelena being aroace comes from his use of "romantic" when referring to natasha, as many people use aroace and asexual interchangeably. i admit that this is vague, so yelena may very well be alloromantic; her asexuality, however, cannot be disputed.

3. yelena is confirmed as an asexual character in the LGBT characters Wiki and Wikipedia itself. given the amount of fact checking that goes into Wikipedia, i find it incredibly hard to believe that yelena's page would state that she is asexual if it's simply a headcanon. for comparison, the Wikipedia page on Albus Dumbledore (who was only said to be gay by R*wling in an interview) does not confirm his sexuality as gay; rather they have an entire section where they specify this was only mentioned by JKR and list the controversy regarding it. if yelena being ace were simply a personal author headcanon, it would have received similar treatment, but instead she is called "the first confirmed asexual character in the marvel universe". idk about you but i'm pretty sure headcanons don't make it into Wikipedia pages.

i thought yelena was only confirmed to be asexual not aro? so in that case what would be wrong with shipping her with someone romantically just not sexually?

now, you're right that yelena has only been confirmed to be asexual, though the hints at her romance repulsion in the black widow movie do indicate that she's likely aromantic as well. but technically, since she's not confirmed aro as yet, it is fine to ship her with someone romantically, so long as her asexuality is respected.

but if i am misremembering and she is aroace- does being aroace mean she would never enter a relationship with someone?

this is really up to the individual. some aroaces never want to enter relationships, others want queer platonic partnerships, yet others do want romantic relationships and marriage. in my case, for instance, i'm fairly sex repulsed so if someone is sexually attracted to me and expects sex in a relationship, that would be a dealbreaker. but i am okay with actions like kissing/cuddling/snuggling etc, all of which are a staple of romantic relationships, so i would be fine with doing all that with a partner. it's different for everyone, and all aroaces are valid no matter what they choose.

can you be aroace and still marry and/or have a long term partnership with someone even if you don’t feel romantic or sexual attraction?

you absolutely can! remember that being aroace defines your romantic/sexual attraction, not your actions. it is absolutely possible to kiss/marry/have sex with someone even if you're not attracted to them, and i'm sure even allos can relate to this. you could do it because you want to make your partner happy, because you don't mind the act itself and your body still has biological reactions, because you just want to spend your life with someone.

for allos, most of the time attraction and action go together, and i think that's why it's confusing to understand aromanticism/asexuality. aroaces might be fine in partnerships or having sex; they just don't feel the "pull" or the "draw" to this one specific person that allos do. i would liken it to eating even when you're not hungry; you don't need to, but it still makes you happy!

could an aroace ever be in a relationship for someone if they only like them platonically but that other person likes them romantically?

definitely. this would have to be discussed between both parties, of course, and i'm not sure it would work in all situations, but it can. again, it simply depends on the individual and their partner and what they're comfortable with.

the reason that aroaces are uncomfortable with yelena being in romantic/sexual relationships is because most of this shipping is done by allos, who use the "but aroaces can still be in a relationship and have sex!" card to disrespect yelena's sexuality. very few people seem to consider the opposite: well, what if yelena doesn't want to be in a relationship or have sex? what if she's romance/sex repulsed (as hinted at in the BW movie)? why is the defining perspective the first side, and not the second?

in real life, aroaces can absolutely be in a relationship, marry, and have sex. but in fiction, if that's the primary way that major aroace characters are represented, then maybe think about why that seems to be only way of writing aroace characters and how coincidental it is that it ties into existing societal norms of amatonormativity and hypersexuality.

#yelena belova #aromanticism #asexuality #aroace #mcu #asks #long ask #if my fellow aroace mutuals want to add on to this with their own experiences please go ahead

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tomeandflickcorner · 4 years ago

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Episode Review- The Real Ghostbusters: You Can’t Take it With You

Hmm. Well, points for attempting to deliver a decent message, but I kept getting distracted by the fact that the main antagonist inexplicitly had access to technology that seemed more advanced than what existed in the 80s.

The story begins late at night. The Ghostbusters are sound asleep, except for Egon who is doing some late night reading. (I knew I liked Egon!) Suddenly, alarms start going off, and Ray, Winston and Peter are woken up. The alarm apparently was meant to go off if a non-corporal rupture was detected, so they hurry down to the basement to check on the Containment Unit. However, when they inspect the Containment Unit, they find it’s in perfect working order. So Peter is completely ready to dismiss it as a false alarm and go back to bed. But Egon disagrees, stating that a huge ecto surge must have just occurred, as even alarms they’d previously shut off had activated. Something must have caused it, so they need to determine what it was.

As the episode progresses, it’s revealed that the ecto surge came from a high rise that’s owned by a billionaire named Mr. Tummel. Basically, Mr. Tummel is aware that he’s getting on in years and knows he will probably die before much longer. So, instead of leaving his fortune behind to be collected by various charities and the like after he croaks (guessing he has no heir), he hired this unnamed scientist to construct a machine that would transport his money and gold bars into the Ghost World. That way, Mr. Tummel could have it with him on the other side. Yeah, Mr. Tummel is clearly not a chartable sort, but then again, what billionaire is? In any event, this machine is what was causing the ecto surge the Ghostbusters detected.

Of course, this is the part when I started scratching my head. Particularly since this random scientist seemed to know enough about the Ghost World and its properties to construct a machine that could transport physical matter across the dimensional barrier. Who is this guy?! How did he learn so much about ghosts and the dimension they live in? I bought the fact that the Ghostbusters managed to create equipment that could catch and hold ghosts because Egon and Ray are both highly intelligent people and inventors. And they clearly studied the paranormal alongside Peter prior to forming the Ghostbusters. But I always got the impression that they were the exception to the rule, as most scientists would disregard anything to do with the realm of the supernatural. Case in point Egon’s Uncle Cyrus from the episode Cry Uncle. But here’s this guy who not only has proven the Ghost World exists but can actually breech the barrier between the Ghost World and the Mortal World. Why isn’t this guy collaborating with the Ghostbusters?! Can you imagine what they could accomplish if he combined forces with Ray and Egon? Come on, show! This guy deserves more than to be treated as just a nameless scientist! He doesn’t even have a page on the Ghostbusters wiki!

Nerdy ranting aside, after the scientist’s machine manages to successfully transport a pile of gold bars into the Ghost World, Mr. Tummel orders him to do the same with a pile of money stacks. The scientist, however, insisted that they had to wait until he ran some tests in order to make sure the machine wasn’t causing any adverse effects on the environment. (He even mentions the ozone layer.) Which only increases my respect for this guy, as it indicates he’s a responsible scientist. But Mr. Tummel refuses to bother with such precautions. What does he care for things like the environment and respecting rules and regulations? All that matters is the wealth he’s obtained. (Yep, he’s definitely a billionaire.) So Mr. Tummel summons two goons to throw the scientist out and takes over the machine himself. Somehow, Mr. Tummel had specifically programed his wheelchair to contain a control panel to the machine, which would allow it to become fully automated. Thus, Mr. Tummel continues to send his extensive wealth over to the Ghost World indiscriminately.

Meanwhile, the Ghostbusters managed to track down the source of the ecto surges to Mr. Tummel’s high rise. As they look up at the high rise, they witness ghosts emerging from the gateway in the sky, which the machine had opened up. Egon realizes that someone managed to create a portal into the Ghost World, but because the door swings both ways, ghosts were starting to emerge from the other side. Some of these ghosts managed to make their way into the room where Mr. Tummel was, but he announces he anticipated this and therefore embedded a few precautionary measures into his wheelchair. Specifically an Ecto Shield and a pair of Particle Throwers to drive the ghosts away. (Did Mr. Tummel steal the blueprints for the Particle Throwers from the Ghostbusters somehow?) The ghosts are driven away from Mr. Tummel and they make their way through the high rise, eventually crossing paths with the Ghostbusters. When the Ghostbusters fire their Proton Packs, some stringy fragments fall off the ghosts, which Winston compared to cobwebs. At this point, Peter, ever the mercenary, questions why they’re bothering with this in the first place. After all, nobody is paying them for this. So what does it matter if ghosts are escaping? It just means they’ll eventually get more calls from paying customers. However, Egon announces that these ghosts were brought into the Mortal World through artificial means. Because of this, their molecular structure was unstable. (Which explains what those cobweb-like fibers were.) If they didn’t do something about this immediately, the escaped ghosts would continue to break down, with each fragment becoming a new ghost. And in approximately 15 hours, the entire world would be completely overrun with ghosts. This explanation is enough to convince Peter to continue on with the pro bono job, probably because he was remembering the events of the earlier episode, Adventures in Slime and Space. Peter moves toward the elevators in order to take them to the top floor, but that option is quickly crossed off when it’s revealed the elevators have become possessed and are therefore inaccessible. So it looks like the Ghostbusters might have no other option other than take the stairs. Which is something they’re not looking forward to as the high rise has 150 floors. Fortunately, Ray has a better idea. This idea involved obtaining a helicopter (somehow) and flying it up to the roof. (Side note- Ray announces he won a free helicopter lesson in 1976. Which, according to my math, means he was about 17 at the time of this lesson.)

Of course, nothing is ever easy. As the helicopter nears the roof of the high rise, the magnetic field surrounding the dimensional gateway and the resulting electrical storm cause the helicopter’s mechanisms to fail. Fortunately, right before they could crash land, Egon manages to hook up the helicopter’s ignition to his Proton Pack, which got the helicopter working again. When they finally do make it up to the roof, they find the door leading inside is locked. And because the door is made of solid steel, they can’t simply blast their way though. Deciding to improvise, Ray once again makes a suggestion and he, Winston and Egon abseil down the side of the building and crash through a window. Of course, to add some humor to the situation, once they’re inside, they see Peter casually entering the room through the door. When they ask how he managed to get inside, he announces he simply picked the lock with a nail file. (Why am I not surprised that Peter knows how to pick locks?)

As they start to look around the high rise’s interior, they hear sounds coming from behind a locked door. Upon opening it, they find three of Mr. Tummel’s servants. Namely, his butler, personal chief and…. I’m guessing the janitor? Upon being freed, they explain to the Ghostbusters what Mr. Tummel was doing. And state that Mr. Tummel was also planning to transport them over to the Ghost World against their will. It seems simply sending over his fortune wasn’t enough. Mr. Tummel also planned on forcing his servants to continue serving him on the other side as well. Because clearly, not even kidnapping and possible murder was too far for him. (Would sending living people over to the Ghost World count as murder?) Armed with the knowledge of who they’re dealing with now, the Ghostbusters make their way to the lab where the machine is located in order to confront Mr. Tummel directly. (Of course, Egon takes a moment to voice his envy over the advanced equipment in this lab, announcing he plans to have a serious discussion with Peter later about their research budget.)

When the Ghostbusters come face to face with Mr. Tummel, they attempt to talk him into stopping what he’s doing, but to no avail. Instead, Mr. Tummel activates his laser security system, which forces the Ghostbusters to dive for cover while Mr. Tummel continues to transport his money into the Ghost World. As they’re crouched down seeking refuge from the laser fire, Egon theorizes that the gateway would close automatically if they overloaded the machine. Peter personally volunteers for this task and, after waving an improvised white flag so Mr. Tummel would turn off the lasers, he tricks the billionaire into attempting to transport the entire building over to the Ghost World. He does this by pointing out that Mr. Tummel might not have a place to live on the other side. Not only that, but when he dies, the building he lives in will be lying empty. Peter drives the nail home by offering to donate the building to the United Way after Mr. Tummel dies. This enrages the old man, as he utterly loathes all charities. So he begins to try and send the entire high rise though the portal as well. Of course, this sets off a chain reaction with multiple explosions going off. Amidst the chaos, Mr. Tummel’s wheelchair is hit, sending him rolling into the transporting area and getting himself transported away.

Even with Mr. Tummel gone though, the machine is still going haywire. Peter, attempting to stop it, fires at the control panel, but this doesn’t do anything as the machine is on automatic at this point. In the hopes of setting off a feedback loop that would jam the transmission, send the escaped ghost back and close the dimensional portal, Egon tosses an open Ghost Trap into the machine’s transporting area. The Ghostbusters and the three servants then escape the building in the helicopter that’s waiting for them on the roof. But even when they’re airborne, it doesn’t look as if the portal will close. Until Winston throws his own Proton Pack at the building. This apparently provides enough energy for the feedback loop to be complete, and the portal closes, pulling all the escaped ghosts back inside in the process. Of course, Mr. Tummel and the high rise were still transported though the portal alongside the ghosts. And as a result, there’s now a large hole where the high rise used to be.

Upon roughly landing the helicopter onto the street below, the Ghostbusters look out at the spot where the high rise was. But as they’re standing there, the gold bars and money stacks that had previously been sent through the portal begin falling from the sky. Peter turns to Egon for an explanation, and Egon surmises that it had something to do with molecular instability. I guess it means that, when Mr. Tummel sent over his high rise, it displaced all the loot he’d sent over earlier. (So we’re talking about dynamic equilibrium here?) Winston concludes that this means Mr. Tummel is now stuck in the Ghost World with nothing but a completely empty building and not a cent of his horded wealth. But he’s got a lot of ghosts to keep him company. Ray announces that this proves the old saying of ‘you can’t take it with you.’ But then…. the Ghostbusters decide to just leave the money and gold bars lying there in the street. Which seems a bit odd. Yeah, I kind of get it because it’s technically not their money and it would probably be considered theft if they just pocketed some of it. But Egon was just voicing his dissatisfaction over how more advanced the equipment in Mr. Tummel’s lab was in comparison to theirs. That money would probably have more than covered the cost of better lab equipment at the Firehouse. And now he’s just deciding to walk away from it?

And to further add to the confusion, a group of police cars pull up moments later. What exactly are they going to do? Of course, I’m sure a report is probably going to have to be filed since Mr. Tummel and his high rise have essentially vanished into thin air. And they probably have to participate somewhat in decisions of what to do with Mr. Tummel’s recovered fortune. But it still struck me as weird that they show up right when the episode is fading to black.

That’s pretty much all I can really say about this episode. Though I suppose it was pretty cool how this episode didn’t have a ghost as the main antagonist. It was just a greedy old man who refused to let anyone else have his horded wealth after he died. Which is an extremely believable concept. Particularly since we’ve just gotten the world’s first trillionaire. Still, this was one of the episodes that left me wanting to know more of what happened after the end credits start to roll. Like what happened to that random scientist guy? What became of those servants who are now out of a job? Who got all that discarded money? Plus, there was this one weird moment toward the end. When Egon throws his open Ghost Trap at the machine in an attempt to overload the system, he starts saying something. Except I had no idea what he was saying there, as the audio sounded really distorted at that part. If someone could tell me what exactly he was saying, I would appreciate it.

(Click here for more Ghostbusters reviews)

#the real ghostbusters #rgb episode review #ghostbusters franchise

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cse6441-blog · 5 years ago

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Week 7 Morning Lecture

Midsem

First we looked at some questions on the midsem. Apparently there was quite a good outcome overall (subjectively according to Richard), and most people did worst on questions 5 and 10.

Question 5. National Security Guy for the President Missiles Richard reasons that the answer is in fact Type 1/Type 2 Error that you would be most worried about. Although the rest of the answers would be things that you would be concerned about, the main worry is that you launch when you shouldn’t (False Positive) and can’t take back the launch or you can’t launch when you need to (False Negative).

An attacker therefore could identify that only the President is able to command the launch as a single point of failure and then take him out, thereby dearming the whole nation of their firepower. In that instance, if any other nation were to attack America, then they wouldn’t be able to order missiles out because only the President has the capability to, who is now dead.

Ironically, the movie Dr Strangelove that we watched later in the evening session had a great display of this example - where a general was able to exploit the system and direct an attack on Russia which could not be recalled without the secret passcode.

Question 10. The Merkle Puzzle Question As revealed, Richard got this answer wrong, the original intended answer was something that could be broken feasibly by a person the night before the exam (Lachlan) and an attacker would not be able to in a reasonable amount of time. This is essentially the idea of Merkle puzzles - where on average, the bad guy has to do a work factor of around 1/500000 (half a million) before they crack the right one.

The originally intended answer was RSA 512 since it was the best answer out of all the options. The other options were as reasoned:

One Time Pad - Uncrackable

Caesar Cipher - Too easy

Vigenere Cipher - Too easy

RSA 2048 - Too hard (takes too long)

SHA256 - A hashing algorithm, irreversible

However it was noted that the RSA cracked would be done using the PUBLIC KEY for ALL OF THEM. Therefore an attacker would only have to crack one for the private key and then be able to crack the rest instantly!

What is proof of liveness? There were some additional security terms that were introduced in the exam which I hadn’t encountered before. One of which is this idea of proof of liveness, which essentially is a indicative check if a person is on the other side of the handshake or not. In modern senses this is like a challenge response, where the person requests access and gets given something to solve to prove they are alive.

Diffie-Hellman (Key Exchange)

From last week we talked about being able to communicate security with someone whom you’ve never met over the internet. However, for a computer, who only knows 0s and 1s, the only form of verification is through shared secrets (something you are, something you know and something you have). However, this poses an issue with someone on the other side of the world

how can you securely communicate the KEY used in order to communicate privately?

The answer is Diffie-Hellman key exchange!

Originally conceptualised by Ralph Merkle (this guy wow lmaooo) and named after Diffie and Hellman, the Diffie-Hellman is a method to securely exchange keys over a public channel. DH is one of the earliest implementations of a public-key protocol in cryptography.

The basic mathematics behind DH is that it utilises exponentiation and modulus in order to obtain Confidentiality. In the lectures, Richard simply covered a simplification using only exponentiation:

Richard and another person (let’s call him Frank) agree on a base number (e.g. 5). This is assumed public information, so it’s fine if everyone knows. Now then Richard and Frank each think of a secret number which they don’t tell anyone

Richard’s number = 7

Frank’s number = 3

Now they simply take the base and raise it to their secret number

Richard: 5^7 = 78125

Frank: 5^3 = 125

Then they simply send each other the result of this calculation (or the last few digits if you were to imagine it was modded). Although this example seems quite trivial to break, imagine if the base and the secrets were 20 digits long! Then it would be a lot harder to reverse the base and secret.

This occurs because of the Mathematical loss of information which makes it easy to encrypt and hard to reverse, also known as the Discrete Logarithm Problem, and is the reason why DH is so effective. (See: https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/cryptography/modern-crypt/v/discrete-logarithm-problem)

In this case, the base and the result of the calculation are PUBLIC, while the kept secrets are PRIVATE.

Next to add another layer of security, Richard then takes the result sent by Frank publicly and raises that number to his secret number - and Frank does the same with Richard’s result.

Richard: 125^7 = 4E14

Frank: 78125^3 = 4E14

The resultant numbers from both operations are thereby EQUAL because of the COMMUTATIVE PROPERTY of powers. In this way by getting the same result, Richard and Frank are able to verify that they are indeed communicating with each other through a public protocol - and they can settle on the end result as the key for their communication.

The reason this works so well is because just through the initial messages, it’s impossible to find out from them what they key is. Since the key was never actually transmitted in messages, listening in on the communication won’t help an attacker! You’re not actually sending any information during the key exchange, but creating one together :)

We do this exactly in practice, where we mix up the information we are sending so that whoever is listening in is unable to decipher the secret from the message. This is called FORWARD SECRECY/SECURITY, which means that even if in future, if someone were to go back and uncover your old messages, they would still be encrypted and unable to be read.

Note: this doesn’t however provide Authentication because you can’t actually verify if it is really Frank or Richard from the other side. You can only tell through this that you’re still sending it to the same person, and that your line is confidential.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman_key_exchange

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/45963/diffie-hellman-key-exchange-in-plain-english

https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/cryptography/modern-crypt/v/diffie-hellman-key-exchange-part-2

Krak de Chevaliers

Krak de Chevaliers was a multi-layered fortress run by the Knights Templar in 1144CE (many years ago). This boi was STACKED, with a strong defence system (Defence in Depth) and prime location perched atop a hill - and as such was considered for many years virtually IMPREGNABLE, being the largest Crusader castle during the 12th century.

Many attacks were held against this fortress, and a few got through past the first wall, but none were able to reach the inner before being eviscerated. It was THAT GOOD.

The design of this boi is ingenious, with every line of physical defence covered. First it has several concentric layers that wear down attacks during their sieges. Then there are moats and several stages in which armies have to be split up due to the restrictions in entry points. Furthermore, they’ve got towers to lay hellfire to any attackers, with an elevated view for the inner wall which is both hard to penetrate being up so high as well as advantageous to provide a vantage point to provide support to the outer wall defences. Then you’ve got sloped points that are vulnerable for attackers and good for the defenders as well as sharp purposeful right angled walls so that there are minimal areas to cover against fire.

In the end however, the fortress did eventually fall to Muslim hands and the knights surrendered after a forged letter was sent through ordering them to lay down. So in the end, humans were the issue and despite all the complex defence mechanisms in place, even the mighty Krak de Chevaliers fell to SOCIAL ENGINEERING.

Sources:

https://www.ancient.eu/Krak_Des_Chevaliers/

Vulnerabilities

Let’s go over a few terms real quicc:

Vulnerability: a potential weakness in something

Exploit: taking advantage of a weakness (the application)

Software Bug: a mistake in something

Memory Corruption Memory Corruption refers to when a bad guy is able to modify and change what happens in memory (i.e. modifying address, contents stored in memory, etc). Through this the make programs do things that they aren’t originally supposed to.

One form of memory corruption is a Buffer Overflow which we saw last week (https://insecure.org/stf/smashstack.html) covered by Aleph One. This memory corruption happens on the Stack where a buffer can be written to past its given size and as such, data gets overwritten on the stack.

The vulnerability of this lecture is FORMAT STRINGS :) Now the thing with vulnerabilities is that it’s quite like the flu. Once someone discovers the vulnerability, they quickly discover that it’s everywhere. Every program and piece of code has it. Once word gets out, the big companies quickly work to patch it, but with smaller institutions and businesses (which is the vast majority of the population), don’t bother with it for a while; because of laziness or cost benefits, etc.

A simple way to illustrate the format string vulnerability is through a simple C program. You may be familiar with the function printf()from first year computing. The thing with printf()is that by good practice, you should be using formats as the first argument in the print function ( printf(%s, “Hello World”)). However we know from experience that this is NOT the case. Programmers are lazy and simply write the string as the first argument without specifying a format in the first place. In fact, pretty much every tutorial every will start with just telling you to pass the string “Hello World” directly into the function.

The issue then again lies in the case where a user is allowed to enter input and a programmer then prints whatever they enter to stdout.

For example, the program:

reads in an input

that input is stored in a variable name.

then the program simply executes printf(name);

Sure, the program is harmless when the user enters what we expect them to, however what if a format argument is passed (i.e. %d, %s, %n, %t, etc)?

Well if the user entered something like the string “Richard%x”:

printf()will take the letters Richard

print that out

and identify %x and look for the NEXT ARGUMENT to substitute into %x

However, in the above input, there is no next argument like in the case of %s, “Hello World’. So the program will then look to the next item on the stack and use that in place for %x. Thereby this format string attack can be used to gather information about what is stored on the stack, and you can decipher what was done in the previous functions.

While this may seem quite harmless, with just gathering information - this isn’t the extent of a format string attack. In fact, there are many many MANY formats you can use and each of them do a variety of things in C.

(this C++ but it the same lol)

From above %n is frighteningly scary because it actually WRITES TO MEMORY, storing the number of characters written to the pointed location. Now this can have extremely dangerous effects and is what we are so scared of when it comes to format strings attacks and memory corruption!

In practice, this is however quite difficult to do, but very much possible. It does take a certain amount of luck and preparation in order to successfully perform a truly devastating format string attack, however, Richard likens the situation with vulnerabilities to SWISS CHEESE.

If you take a block of swiss cheese and you slice it up in a few pieces, then rearrange it multiple times and try to line them those pieces up together, once in a while those holes will line up and you can stick your finger right through. It’s very much like this in reality. The bugs are the little holes which seem so small and insignificant on their own, with little format string reads from memory and buffer overflows. But if you pair all those attacks together, once in a while those bugs align and an attack is successful!

More Terms to Know

Shell Code

Let’s say you’re attacking a system, and you’ve gotten in - but you’re unsure what you want to attack at the moment. Well what you can do is simply generate a nice private shell externally on your computer which has access to their system remotely. This is what is known as shell code - writing code that generates an external shell which you have control over.

NOP Sled

NOP is a command in machine code that literally makes the CPU do nothing for a few cycles. So a NOP sled is simply just a sequence of these instructions to make the CPU slide to the desired destination. Therefore an attacker is able to utilise a NOP sled by making the program go to a specific address where they may have stored malicious code! The ingenious aspect of a NOP sled is that they are used to increase the attack area over a huge range of memory. That way the chances that the program lands anywhere in the NOP sled increases, and it trickles down to wherever they want to run. This deals with the issue of memory being randomised and allocated everywhere.

In Assembly, this is literally just:

NOP; NOP; NOP; NOP; NOP; NOP; NOP; // etc etc lmaoo

*Interestingly you can find programs which try and exploit this by simply Googling a sequence of NOP commands and you’ll land upon matching ones with NOP sleds :) (https://github.com/snoack/python-goto/commit/2b0f5e5069cbb88776b0d070d6608e4064735d96)

There are also other ways in which you can make a program ‘do nothing’. For example, making a program add 1 and subtract 1 continually to a register.

Sources:

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/practical-malware-analysis/9781593272906/ch20s07.html

Responsible Disclosure

Let’s say you’re a bug bounty hunter, and you happen across a bug in some licensed software. What is the right way to go about alerting the developer/company? Normally companies will have some sort of feedback form in which you can submit reports on bugs and how to reproduce them. However if this isn’t the case, normally you should do some research about the bug you’ve encountered and generate a report to send to the company. In this way you’re first giving them time to fix it. In the instance that nothing gets done after you’ve informed them, you should slowly escalate the problem up the chain. The most important thing is to NOT LET THE BAD GUYS HAVE IT (unless you are one of them or ludicrous amounts of money is involved).

Assets

Assets are a very hard thing to define, but identifying what is important to protect is incredibly important because it allows you to prioritise your assets and how you can go about setting up defences.

In the lecture, Richard showed us the starting clip from the movie ‘Team America’ where a satirical team of over-the-top terrorist fighting Hollywood personalities went above and beyond to protect what they believed was the MOST IMPORTANT asset; the lives of the French civilians. In the following clip, we can see them using all force necessary (minus the hand to hand combat from Karate Kid) to put down the terrorists, but in the process they destroy some of the most monumental pieces of French history (notably the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, etc).

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIPljGWGNt4

One could argue that they did more harm than good than if they just let the terrorists blow up the citizens, however it’s really a matter of perspective as those people may value the historical assets over the human lives. This really is a tough question of ethics, but ultimately I think a good point is brought up here. History, no matter how beautiful and valuable, dims in the preciousness that is human life. If human life is taken out, there is a destruction of potential in the future - whereas historical artefacts can be recreated. History will be made anyway, so it’s arguable, but human life is ultimately the most precious asset.

History is Forgotten

Back when Richard was a boy, he recalls the time of the Cold War where Reagan and Gorbachev where locked in a heated battle of chicken. Both nations had nukes pointed at one another, in retaliation of the threat each imposed on one another. However, Richard had a thought:

“If the Russians attack America, and they don’t retaliate, in a few years people will just forget it happened and be happy that they have half a planet left”

While this is quite dark to think about, it is what I believe to be a cold truth. Time precedes all, and no matter how big the disaster or devastating the crime, people forget or stop caring anymore. If you think about all the great big battles that were such a huge deal at the time, now they’re almost so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. In the whole timeline of the Universe, a battle is simply an instant, and in a few hundred years people forget about it all.

Richard likens this phenomenon with the great poem “Ozymandias”, about the history ‘King of Kings’. Such a person with a magnificent statue must have been extremely great and honourable at the time. He might have been the biggest deal in his area, but ultimately time took him as well. And like the poem says, ‘nothing else remains’. Whatever happened with the great Ozymandias, no one knows or cares anymore. History has left him behind in the sands.

Opinion: In time, everything becomes insignificant and nothingness. Perhaps we should preserve what is truly valuable - that which is all precious and important. Although devastating would be the destruction of the Louvre, life is the greatest asset.

Poem:

I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Great reading + animation of ‘Ozymandias’ by Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlSH6n37ts

Protecting your Assets

You might value something as the most important asset, whereas an attacker might be after something else. So it’s very easy to protect the wrong thing and put resources into defending the wrong areas.

Richard had a friend who lived in Surry Hills which was a rough neighbourhood back in the day. Very often his car’s window would be smashed open with a brick and his car would be rummaged for money. However, his friend didn’t keep any money inside his car, and so he felt devastated, having to always pay to repair his broken window. To him, the most valuable asset was the car window. So his solution was simply to leave his car window open. That way, attackers would go approach and find that they wouldn’t need to break the window to get in. In the end, it worked!

So when you protect the right assets, you yield the best results. Coke knows that their most valuable asset is not their secret recipe - in fact, probably hundreds of thousands of employees across the globe know the recipe. Coke’s most valuable asset is their BRAND. The Coke brand has become so powerful that it has its own psychological effect on people. In fact, in a blind taste test between Coke and Pepsi, researchers found that Pepsi almost always won. However, when participants knew which was Coke and which was Pepsi, more often than not, they preferred Coke. Even more interesting is the fact that when analysing the brain during this process, researchers found that Pepsi lit up the part of the brain that dealt with taste and senses, whereas Coke lit up the area of the brain to do with Identity.

https://slate.com/business/2013/08/pepsi-paradox-why-people-prefer-coke-even-though-pepsi-wins-in-taste-tests.html

#week7 #lectures

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ngame989 · 6 years ago

Note

once I saw a speculation that when Marco and Star were dancing at the bloody moon ball Star expected to be Tom and not Marco what do you think of that? happy 2019 for you and for seddm

OK so usually I try to be nice to good faith askers, and at most I get sarcastic with my response. I’m not gonna do that here. @transparentzinewagoneclipse, I’m sorry in advance, because most of the harsh things I’m going to say aren’t directly directed at you… but in a way, they are, and I hope you can try to assess what I have to say for yourself and consider taking it to heart.

Let’s take literally 1 sentence to answer this question, starting… now. She asked “how did you know my name”, and if she was expecting Tom (or anyone specific she knew) there is NO reason for her to say that, so NO she was not expecting Tom. Solved with literally one line of surface-level analysis of the direct dialogue, no subtext or deeper looks needed.

Or if you wanted me to go further for some reason, I could quote the passage in the Book of Spells about it that implies that if she realized it was someone she know subconsciously, it was Marco.

I think I’ve already answered your questions with pleas to actually think about the random word vomit you read online, so I’ll do it again, a bit firmer, a bit meaner, a bit bolder, because these are the biggest issues that plague the fandom as a whole and make it completely pointless to try actually having fun and engaging conversations about the show with 97% of people. There are absolutely a huge amount of questions and unknowns to discuss and speculate on, and that’s all well and good, but THERE ARE ALSO A FUCKTON OF THINGS THAT ARE (AS MUCH AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE) COMPLETELY SOLVABLE, TOTALLY KNOWN, OR 100% INFERABLE WITH NO LEGITIMATE COUNTER TO THEIR VERACITY. If you see “speculation” about something in the show, I do not advise you to discard it entirely if you don’t agree with it or if it supports something you don’t like. That is far from the point here, and something resembling that attitude is what led a lot of Starcos to their peril before Season 3. However, all I ask is that you actually weigh these statements against the facts. In this case it didn’t even require complex media analysis of any kind: I solved this question with a cursory glance at a direct quote available to anyone with a simple wiki search. I provided additional supporting evidence, too, but even if you yourself don’t have access to the Book, you can solve the issue.

And this attitude, that EVERY bit of “speculation” uttered by anyone must be treated as valid, that NOTHING can be any more probable (or, god forbid, more certain) than anything else, is what makes this fandom intolerable for any sort of reasonable discussion. There are so many interesting topics to talk about, nuances to analyze, futures to speculate on, and no one is talking about any of it because everyone still feels that the basic facts of what happened are somehow up for debate. And I thank some of my frequent askers, particularly @starcoiskillingmebutidontcare, for actually positing a lot of interesting ideas about Season 4 for me to think about because I don’t get any of it anywhere but my immediate, very small circle of friends, because most of it is spent on this type of thing instead. Now I am not accusing you, dear asker, of being the cause of any of this, but I think you’re at the very least a victim to this mentality, unable or unwilling to actually put these basic yes-or-no questions to the test yourself. And in general I’m more than willing to tackle a lot of questions people have about this type of thing because there are a lot of elements to the show that have a generally correct answer but can always use a deeper look under the surface which most people might not do, but this specific type of question posed in this ask even being a question indicates a fundamental problem with how fans treat the show.

Open-mindedness means you are open to listening to statements and assessing their worth, not that you must treat every word that enters your brain as an equally plausible with no regard for their specific merits. I’m a scientist and this shit pisses me off outside of the fandom too. Just because your local news station put one scientist and one random guy together on a segment to debate climate change does NOT mean each side has 50% of the evidence behind it. Just because some people say vaccines are good and some people say they’re bad doesn’t mean the objective consensus on the topic is doubtful or mixed. These false dichotomies sew doubt where there shouldn’t be any and create genuinely harmful paranoia around the world. And of COURSE the topic of analyzing a princess cartoon doesn’t even begin to compare to the impact of these other things, but the same principles are at play in both cases. I would not be open-minded if I laughed at you for asking this question without giving any reason for my refutation beyond “lol no me no likey Tomstar u stoopid”, but that is not the case. I took this supposed speculation, listened to it, and analyzed it. The analysis determined that it is patently, 100%, without a doubt false, but I still gave it a fair shake. Am I perfect in this regard? No. I still feel a compulsive need to swat away a lot of things I see, and for the most part a lot of them are just repetitive word slurry that don’t need any further analysis beyond what I’ve already given it (e.g. Starco is cliche/forced) but it’s still worth my while (and yours, too) to at least do a sanity check every now and then, to make sure that you understand why the wrong things are wrong and why the right things are right.

So once again, @transparentzinewagoneclipse, I’m not going to refuse your asks or anything in the future, but I implore you to simply think, when you read or hear things online. Think, even with what I’m saying: I’d feel even worse if my words about treating what others say as neither void of knowable meaning or as unquestionable gospel were used as unquestionable gospel by their readers. I can hope to build a rock-solid enough case that even a pretty casual assessment of them is convincing for most, but that’s it. Anyway, rant over. Live long and prosper and Starco and all that jazz.

#answered #transparentzinewagoneclipse #svtfandom #analysis

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yanagihime · 6 years ago

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Long Vento Aureo shitpost incoming

This is a result of me trying to think too hard on the background of the characters I cosplay, and coming up with too many headcanons as a result.

Plus, I have annoyed @auralime with this theory for too long and it’s time for someone else to suffer through this now I guess.

Anyway, the culprit for this little essay/study is, in this instance, no other than Giorno Giovanna from Vento Aureo. I will also mention some events and characters not shown in the anime yet, so this is the warning. Anime-onlys, avert your eyes now.

Actually, the previous paragraph may be somewhat incorrect, since in the course of this post I will try to make the following statement: Giorno’s legal name is still Haruno Shiobana; he never changed it.

It felt strange for me when, in Episode 1, it came as a surprise to Koichi (and by extent, Jotaro) that Haruno now went by Giorno, even though Jotaro had gotten plenty of information on him beforehand. If you look at a HQ image of the reverse of the photo Koichi has at the airport:

it reads 汐華初流乃　(Shiobana Haruno), (then some kanji I can’t really make out but probably 住所/address), Via Bosco di Capodimante, 75/b 80131, Neapolis NA, ITALIA, Dormitorio della scuola media Neapolis, 304. The address is one of an actual middle school in Naples, too. I’m guessing 304 is a dorm room number. The scene in the anime shows that Jotaro also has plenty of recent-looking pictures of Giorno, still with black hair but already rocking the pink suit, as well as of his mother, step-father and school. This is a lot of information you have on a guy. Therefore, why would the fact that Haruno is now Giorno somehow slip past Jotaro&Co?

If Jotaro had gotten his information from some national register, it would have the documents on the name change. If he somehow got his hands on school records, there is no way Koichi would have been sent to search for Haruno, because the school wouldn’t have a student with that name. This seems to indicate that whatever was the source of information Jotaro found, it still listed the youth that had moved to Italy 11 years ago as Haruno Shiobana.

We are never told when Haruno apparently changed to Giorno. In the anime scenes, his stepfather initially calls him by his Japanese name, but by the time he appears to be in elementary school, both him and school bullies are calling him Giorno. However, ‘Giorno’ could just as well be a (not necessarily positive) childhood nickname, that ended up being used all the time, up to the point that Giorno himself is only introducing himself exclusively with that name.

Haruno’s last name would probably not change simply because his mother is now married and has a different last name herself. Experts in 1990s Italian law are free to correct me, but usually a child’s last name will only change if they are officially adopted.There is no information on whether Mr. Giovanna actually adopted Haruno/Giorno. He did not seem like a particularly pleasant man, so it’s not unfeasible that official adoption papers were never filed. The anime makes no secret that school bullies gave Haruno a hard time for being half-Japanese, so he could have started using his step-father’s last name as a protective measure, even if it didn’t really work. It doesn’t look like he is particularly proud of his Japanese heritage. The airport security mention how Giorno doesn’t look Japanese at all, so apparently Padre’s genes proved to be dominant after all.

If ‘Giorno’ really is a nickname Haruno got as a child, there is no information where it came from. His family is not particularly affectionate towards him, so unless it initially was meant to be mocking, but Haruno failed to pick up on it. We are talking about the guy who thinks “Gang-Star” is a cool title, after all (GioGio I love you but please don’t pun).

There is another interesting little bit of information. Let’s say that Jotaro had an extraordinary moment of incompetence, so after somehow finding out that DIO had surviving girlfriends, making mental connections and deciding these relationships were probably rated NC-17, finding information on at least one of these lovers that had given birth... he then did not bother to check what the child’s name was? Okay, we can imagine that. Except, there was actually one more time when someone else failed to get correct information on Giorno.

In Man in the Mirror arc, Illuso pulls Fugo into the Mirror World and proceeds to read him a short summary of his wiki page

and then he gets to Giorno and goes “Nope, I’ve got nothing.” Apparently he’s even unsure of his last name. Now, Illuso is hinted to be the intel guy of La Squadra. Gathering information and ambushing the targets based on that is, quite literally, his job. We don’t know how long he had tracked the Bucci Gang, but it would still make sense if he at least knew some basic things about Giorno: age, the fact that he’s from Naples, is a middle schooler, anything? I know it’s 2001 and Google is still young, but there must have been other databases Illuso could check. (Alternate theory: Mirror World has no Internet. A truly horrible Stand power...)

Unless he was searching for the wrong guy all along. It makes sense he found nothing about Giorno Giovanna if he should have been looking for Haruno Shiobana all along.

Long story short, the new Don of Naples has a really embarrassing school ID somewhere in his wallet.

Did anyone even bother reading all the way down? I’m surprised. If anyone feels like adding something, please do.

#JoJo's Bizzare Adventure #Vento Aureo #vento aureo spoilers #maybe #Giorno Giovanna #can you guess I graduated from the humanities #every time I type something I end up with a mini essay #VA shitposting

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rhenal · 7 years ago

Text

To the Void with the Void

Few things in Dragon Age lore bother me quite as much as the Void. It appears just about everywhere, in every faith, but what any one teaching says about what it actually IS never seems to be consistent - even in the same set of teachings.

Come with me on this journey, as I go through the Dragon Age Wiki page on the Void and follow every single cite note to the source - and look through those cited sources as well.

It starts with a brief summary, then goes into Chantry beliefs, because of course that comes first. It lists some verses from the chant.

All that the Maker has wrought is in His hand Beloved and precious to Him. Where the Maker has turned His face away, Is a Void in all things; In the world, in the Fade, In the hearts and minds of men.

Passing out of the world, in that Void shall they wander; O unrepentant, faithless, treacherous, They who are judged and found wanting Shall know forever the loss of the Maker's love. Only Our Lady shall weep for them.

—Canticle of Threnodies, 12:5

So... the void is both a vague emptiness in everything the Maker doesn’t like and the Andrastian version of Hell? Right. How conveniently vague. It never says ‘the Void’ though, just ‘a Void’.

Next follows some extrapolations. Since I know that fanon and canon tend to intermingle a lot in small, subtle and insidious ways, I shall stick as close to the source material - and only the source material - as the wiki and the rest of my resources will allow for, while mostly ignoring the wiki-specific text. So. Let’s follow the cite notes, in order.

The first one refers to a conversation with Sebastian in DA II. I don’t have that DLC, because I think that guy is kind of an arse and not worth my money, and after over an hour of searching both the wiki and youtube, I have not found this conversation, so I’m gonna drop that trail for now.

Second cite note also refers to a Sebastian conversation, but this is one I can actually find. It’s a banter conversation between him and Isabela.

Isabela: So, I've never understood why the Chantry says if you're good, you'll be taken up to the Maker's side. Sebastian: Those who die with the sins cleansed from their souls will walk beside the Maker in eternity. Isabela: That doesn't sound fun! Isabela: If they really want people to be good, shouldn't they offer an afterlife with... lakes of wine and a dozen naked virgins? Sebastian: Anyone who wants that will be going to the Void. Isabela: Sounds like that's where all the good parties will be.

So, Andrasian hell. K. Still doesn’t tell me anything useful.

Next few cite notes are grouped up. These unfortunately refer to books that I do not have access to at the moment - World of Thedas vol. 1 and the Dragon Age Origins official game guide - so I’ll simply settle for sharing the statement on the wiki.

The sinners are lost, endlessly wandering the Fade or even returning to the "ether" (the primeval matter of the Fade) from which they were made.

So, conflating the Void and the Fade now, are we? The next sentence references the Canticle of Threnodies, saying that it says that the Void is a place within the Fade. Time to check out what’s available of that Canticle myself...

Huh. Oh, that’s a lot. Yet after reading it all, the only mention of the Void I could find is in 12:5 above. “Where the Maker has turned His face away, Is a Void in all things; In the world, in the Fade, In the hearts and minds of men.” I think that can be interpreted in a lot of ways. It doesn’t quite say “The Void is a place in the fade” to me. It just says that there is an emptiness - a Void - in everything that the Maker found fault in. And he certainly found fault in the Fade, according to earlier verses in that very same Canticle. I don’t know, but this instance seems more figurative to me. Maybe I’m wrong.

Moving on. Up next is another Chantry verse.

Here lies the abyss, the well of all souls. From these emerald waters doth life begin anew. Come to me, child, and I shall embrace you. In my arms lies Eternity.

—Canticle of Andraste, 14:11

I can’t help but notice how ‘abyss’ isn’t capitalised in this verse. I checked in game - it’s not capitalised there either.

This verse bothers me. When reading further into the codex entry of “Here Lies the Abyss”, there is some musings by Revered Mother Juliette accompanying the verse. They read as follows:

Chantry sisters have long debated this section of the Chant of Light. It is tempting to assume that the "well of all souls" is a literal well, but such imagery appears nowhere in Andraste's other works. An examination from Threnodies 1:4 yields clues:

From the waters of the Fade you made the world. As the Fade had been fluid, so was the world fixed.

It is possible—even likely—that the "emerald waters" Andraste refers to are the substance of the Fade, which began as an "ocean of dreams" (Threnodies 1:1) and was reduced to a well—bottomless but limited in scope—by the Maker's creation of our world.

Is Andraste urging the listener to come to the Fade? Should we take "From these emerald waters doth life begin anew," as literal evidence of reincarnation—or even of life after death, as the Cult of Spirits suggests—or as a figurative benediction indicating that the Maker is the source of all life, and in finding His embrace for Eternity, we will only be returning our souls from whence they came?

Vague, is it not? Juliette seems as confused as I am.

Now, I remember when The Descent came out. When seeing The Wellspring at the end of that story, a lot of think-pieces popped up in the Meta community about how it looked an awful lot like what Andraste might have been describing in that Canticle of hers. Note how, in the Wiki page for the above-mentioned codex entry, there is a trivia section with a quoted passage from The Calling?

"It’s where Andraste goes to speak to the Maker for the first time. It’s where she convinces him to forgive mankind. It was supposed to be this beautiful temple deep under the earth surrounded by emerald waters."

Interesting, no?

If anything, it seems safe to say that The Chant doesn’t seem very interesting in defining just what either the Void or this abyss is in the first place, and anything further simply seem to be interpretations by various Chantry people, which is hardly a reliable source of anything.

Continuing down the Wiki page on the Void, we have the Elven beliefs section. Something something The Forgotten Ones dwell there - the cite note leads us to Codex Entry: Elven God Andruil. Well. Not beliefs of modern elves, then, since this entry is found in the temple of Mythal, but that’s splitting hairs.

One day Andruil grew tired of hunting mortal men and beasts. She began stalking The Forgotten Ones, wicked things that thrive in the abyss. Yet even a god should not linger there, and each time she entered the Void, Andruil suffered longer and longer periods of madness after returning.

Andruil put on armor made of the Void, and all forgot her true face. She made weapons of darkness, and plague ate her lands. She howled things meant to be forgotten, and the other gods became fearful Andruil would hunt them in turn. So Mythal spread rumors of a monstrous creature and took the form of a great serpent, waiting for Andruil at the base of a mountain.

When Andruil came, Mythal sprang on the hunter. They fought for three day and nights, Andruil slashing deep gouges in the serpent's hide. But Mythal's magic sapped Andruil's strength, and stole her knowledge of how to find the Void. After this, the great hunter could never make her way back to the abyss, and peace returned.

—Translated from ancient elven found in the Arbor Wilds, source unverified

Here is a much more clear distinction of the Void as an actual, tangible thing. Abyss is still not being capitalised, though. Abyss speaks to me of something deep down below. And the ancient Elves were actively encouraged to seek the deepest parts of the Fade, as seen in Codex Entry: Vir Dirthara: The Deepest Fade.

The pages of this book—memory?—are instructions on how to reach the deepest parts of the Fade, realms so far removed they're unmarked by Dreamers:

"Epiphany requires a mind smooth as mirror glass, still as stone. Put aside ten years for practice, and the next hundred for searching. What others have learned will ease your journey. Those who never manifested outside the Fade will find it easier to find its stillest roots, but it is rare the compulsion overtakes our brethren of the air."

Andruil roaming the Void was considered a bad thing by the Elves, yet seeking the deepest parts of the Fade was encouraged. That says to me that they are not the same. That says to me that the Void is not found in the Fade.

The Andruil codex entry also says that “all forgot her true face” and that because of her actions, “plague ate her lands”. The idea that it was Andruil who caused the Blight has been around for a long time. This codex entry is the source of that theory. So far, I am inclined to agree that it certainly sounds like that may be the case. So. Quite possibly, according to this tale, if this plague is indeed the blight, it can be concluded that the Blight came from the Void.

However, that is a whole lot of conditions. A lot of ‘if’s.

Next up, there’s talk about the legends of Fen’Harel and The Great Betrayal - which we know for certain fact by now is a lot more complicated than the legends make it out to be. However, I don’t remember there being any mention of the Void or an abyss - or even the Forgotten Ones - being mentioned in our conversation with Solas in Trespasser. Sometimes I wonder if the Forgotten Ones are just a trail that Bioware wants to drop, but then I remember that their most explicit appearance in all the games so far is as recently as Jaws of Hakkon. Well. Back on track.

The cite notes here only lead me to Arlathan: Part two and the Dread Wolf codex entry - both tellings of the Dalish legend, which tells me nothing new. The Forgotten Ones were allegedly trapped in the abyss. Might be good to point out that these legends also appear to imply that the Forgotten Ones came from the abyss, or at least that it was their home. “[...]if only the Forgotten Ones would return to the abyss for a time.“

Hmm. The Void wiki entry next says that The World of Thedas includes accounts of the Evanuris being trapped in the Eternal City. I thought that was just a theory. I really need to get that book. Clear some things up.

On to the next cite note, which leads me to the codex entry Elgar’nan: God of Vengeance. Another Dalish account, but this one brings up something interesting that I’ve not paid attention to before.

The sun, looking down upon the fruitful land, saw the joy that Elgar'nan took in her works and grew jealous. Out of spite, he shone his face full upon all the creatures the earth had created, and burned them all to ashes. The land cracked and split from bitterness and pain, and cried salt tears for the loss of all she had wrought. The pool of tears cried for the land became the ocean, and the cracks in her body the first rivers and streams.

Elgar'nan was furious at what his father had done and vowed vengeance. He lifted himself into the sky and wrestled the sun, determined to defeat him. They fought for an eternity, and eventually the sun grew weak, while Elgar'nan's rage was unabated. Eventually Elgar'nan threw the sun down from the sky and buried him in a deep abyss created by the land's sorrow.

A deep crack in the earth - a crack referrenced to as an abyss no less - created by the Sun’s rage.

Perhaps, this instead is a reference to the war in which the Evanuris were generals. The war that enabled their ascent to presumed godhood. And this chasm was opened by the battles waged in this war.

My mind wanders to The Abyssal Reach in the Western Approach. You know the one - the ginormous black chasm? The one that you fall into during Here Lies the Abyss?

The Wiki entry on the Western Approach says that “This area was the site of a major battle during the Second Blight. The darkspawn swarmed out of the great chasm to the south named the Abyssal Rift and corrupted the land beyond recovery.” Note that it doesn’t say is that the chasm was created during the Second Blight. It would appear that it was already there.

I’m thinking that this chasm is the same as the one referenced in Elgar’nan’s legend.

Although - nothing about this says that this chasm and the Void is the same thing. But I suspect that they may be connected.

Continuing down the Void wiki page, all that’s left is the cult of the Empty Ones - who worshiped the blight - as well as a fairly lengthy trivia section. Nothing I find here is new. The Empty ones say the Darkspawn came from the Void and that the Void is a place of nothingness. General mentions of a hungry, yawning void - which doesn’t really say anything because that’s a pretty general turn of phrase. The Staff of the Void’s description talks about a void as an absence of something, which once again sounds more like a turn of phrase than anything substantial.

There is always the Anvil of the Void - the thing that the Dwarves used to forge Golems. Since it essentially functioned by transferring the soul of a dwarf into that of the Golem, it could imply that the Void is somehow related to souls - or at least Dwarven souls - which would support the verse from the Canticle of Andraste mentioned before. But then, we also know that Elven souls come from the Fade - or at least that is what is implied, considering their close kinship with Spirits before the Veil.

And there is still the whole thing about where we have absolutely no idea where the Humans even came from in the first place...

So far, I’ve seen a lot of fairly interesting thinking points - but absolutely nothing that would really lead to any real consensus to what the Void even is - IF it even is. I can’t help but feel that despite the frequent use of the terms Void and abyss in both Elven and Chantry lore, none of these references are similar enough - or substantive enough - for me to be able to be able to safely conclude that the Void even is a special place or thing at all. It sounds to me like metaphorical speech far more often than it does anything else. A metaphor for deep underground or something. The Deep Roads. I don’t know.

But then I remember The Descent again. The Wellspring. The ‘lake’ that seemed almost like a sky. The Dwarf legend of the king who dug so deep down that he and his entire thaig “fell into the sky”. It makes me wonder...

In the end, all I feel I can really conclude for myself is that whatever it is, the Abyss is mostly deep below, and the Fade is mostly up above. I don’t think they are the same. Also that the Blight probably comes from the Void in one way or another.

But honestly, any more than that, the lore just doesn’t seem to converge into anything substantial anywhere. There is simply far too little to go on to make any solid conclusions, and what little lore there is appear to go into different places more often than not. We can assume, we can theorise, we can extrapolate - but what real lore there actually is tells us surprisingly little.

If anyone has any thoughts about this that are more coherent than mine, I’d love to hear them, because it feels like I’m thinking in circles.

#dragon age meta #dragon age inquisition #dragon age 2 #dragon age origins #the void #This post took me four hours to make #My brain feels kinda mushy #I'm tired #I should go to sleep

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endangeredlanguagechallenge · 7 years ago

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Endangered language challenge #4: Kusunda language

Kusunda (Kusanda, mihaq) is a language spoken by the Kusunda people in Nepal. It was originally thought to have died in 1985. But 2004, 3 speakers were discovered and most of the documentation we have today results from intense work with them. They belong to the ethnic group of Kusunda or Ban Raja, which is translated as “The Kings of the Forest”. It is an exonym, given by outsiders and not themselves, and it points to the fact that many Kusundas live in the forest. They have no problems with the term “Kusunda” (while in some regions of India it is used as an insult) but they refer to themselves as “mihaq” the peoples. Nowadays, there are only 160 ethnic Kusundas left. Of the 3 remaining speakers, none is monolingual, all of them also use Nepali. They all married outside their ethnic group and no child is raised in this language anymore, making Kusunda a moribund language. While most speakers vary widely in their fluency, Gyani Maiyi Sen is the most famous speaker and the most fluent if not only native one, she often gets referred to as the last speaker. (She is depicted in this video.)

youtube

The interesting thing about Kusunda is, while earlier researchers thought of it as a Tibeto-Burman variety, it is now evident that it is a language isolate, thus, not related to any other known language. It is probably the last remnant of languages that were spoken before the Tibeto-Burman and Indo-Iranian languages came to that region and it is not related to the Munda or Dravidian languages. The groundwork was laid by David Watters 2005 when he published the workings from the intense working with the three remaining speakers in a Kusunda grammar, which offers grammatical, typological and vocabulary insights.

Kusunda Phonology

Kusunda hat some interesting features: - It has six vowels that oppose each other in vowel harmonies, making them phonologically only three phonemes. Normally, only /i, ə, u/ or only /e, a, o/ can be together in one word. Theoretically, one set could be replaced by the other set without changing the meaning. - Kusunda is phonologically very distinct to its surroundings: It has uvular and pharyngealized consonants that don’t appear in neighbouring languages, and while retroflex consonants are prevalent in that region they don’t occur in Kusunda. - While English contrasts sounds by the place of articulation and the articulator, in Kusunda, mostly only the active articulator is of importance. So, it wouldn’t matter where the tip of the tongue (apical consonants) produces a sound, but only that it is done by it. Throughout the words, one would find apical consonants that are dental, alveolar, retroflex and palatal without changing the meaning. Even voicing, like the difference between /p/ and /b/, seems to play a minor role, as does aspiration, and many sounds can be stops here and fricatives there.

Kusunda Grammar

Very strikingly and highly unique among the world’s languages is the way Kusunda distinguishes between marked and unmarked structures. Irrealis would be a marked feature in comparison to the unmarked realis, same goes for negativity versus affirmation and other features. Normally, languages would make use of affixes or other means to denote these structures. Kusunda however, deploys a harmonic autosegmental process (often called mutation) that applies to the whole word. An apical consonant would then shift to a laminal consonant, a velar consonant to a uvular one and the first set of vowels would change to the second one, in order to mark the irrealis in contrast to the realis of the negativity in contrast to the affirmative modus. Here is an example: If you say “I go” you would apply the realis because it is present time. The form would be /ts-əg-ən/, but if you want to say “I will go” you have to use the irrealis and thus change the consonants’ articulator: /tʃ-aɢʕ-an/ - as you see, the velar /g/ of the root becomes uvular /ɢʕ/ (among the other changes) and is thus marking the irrealis by mutation.

Verbs are roughly divided into two groups. Class I gets personal prefixes and numeral suffixes: First persons are indicated by /t-/ or /ts-/, second persons by /n-/ and the third persons by /g-/ or others. The singular is indicated by the suffix /-Vn/ (V stands for a vowel) and the plural by the suffix /-da-/ that comes directly after the root and is followed by /-n/. So, you can distinguish “I eat” (t-əm-ən) from “You eat” (n-əm-ən), or “I eat” (t-əm-ən) from “We eat” (t-əm-da-n). The prefixes also resemble the first consonants of the personal pronouns a lot, which are /tsi/ and /tok/ for the 1. P. Sg. & Pl., /nu/ and /nok/ for the 2. P. Sg. & Pl. and /gina/ for the 3. P. which has no distinction between plural or singular. The verbs from Class I are few in number and highly irregular.

Most verbs are in Class II, which differ in a lot of features from Class I verbs. If the verb is transitive, the conjugated forms of “I made, we made, you made, etc.” come after the verb root. So, if you want to put the verb “to buy” /dza/ in the first person singular you add /a-t-n̩/ which simply means “I made” > dza-a-t-n̩ (I made buying). If the verb is intransitive, you simply add the personal pronoun after the root and add a /-n/. From “to enter” /sip/ you would simply come to “I enter” by adding /tsi/ and /-n/ > /sip-tsi-n/.

That is just a peek into the grammar, there are a lot of very interesting and unique features that Kusunda has to offer and it is definitely worth a further look into the grammar David Watters wrote.

Kusunda Phrases

The Australian National University in Canberra has some very good resources on Kusunda on their website. If you want to hear the sound files to the following phrases or other sentences or even texts, visit this website.

Sodzaq! - Greetings! (hello or goodbye) Tsi gidzi Gyani Maiya - My name is Gyani Maiya Tsi tugun - I've come (I'm here) Nəti? - Who (is it)? Nu wee? - Are you well? Nətn nitn? - What did you say? Hampena nugun? - Where have you come from? Ni whi hampe? - Where is your house? Tsi whi Kulmor - My house is in Kulmore Garaw əni - It's hot Idang ugun - I'm hungry Pəwhəiran əni - I'm tired Aw təgəi! - Let's go! Hana nyhaan? - Where are you going? Kafera muitsidaq - We'll meet again

Gyani Maiya’s words about the language loss: Ta gepən mi: əndzi - This language is going to be lost. Nətima gepən ədu - There is none to talk with. Mjaqa tsi toqdu ta qau nətn ba - I am alone and if I died, then there is nothing. Ləmbə ədi ta nəti ləmbə əgəndzi - Though I am ready to teach, is there anyone to learn? Toqdu bela ənin jiodze gepən əgu ta ləmbə əgu ta we: da - It would be better if they learnt since I am very old now.

Kusunda sources

See for further linguistic material the link to Glottolog and check the links under the Wikipedia article or the Links page of the ANU Kusunda Linguistics article.

Ethnologue: Kusunda language Glottolog: Kusunda language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kusunda_language Kusunda grammar, David Watters (2006) Kusunda Linguistics, information, texts, audio (Australian National University)

#Kusunda #Kusanda #Ban Raja #mihaq #endangered language challenge #endangered languages #linguistics #Nepal #Nepalese #language isolate #moribund #reverse language shift #languages

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prixmiumarchive · 7 years ago

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The thing about Black Canary

I’m a couple weeks behind on Season 6, but I’ve been watching. However, I’m also a recently-returned fan who stopped watching Arrow (and lots of things at the same time) mid-S3. I have absorbed a lot of things through osmosis and gifs and reading wikis and so on, because sometimes I need spoilers for fannish activities, and it’s more about the journey it most cases. I’m disclosing this to let you know where I’m coming from, but anyway...

A lot of the time I see some ~discourse~ about how Sara is the true Black Canary because per Arrow she was the first. I also see a lot of posts that complain that Laurel’s becoming a superhero arc was really unconvincing and that they didn’t like it and wanted Sara to stay and so on... There seems to be a lot of “haha, in your face!” kind of victory dance goings-on when Sara gets used as the face of the Black Canary (there was some mobile app; there have also been other promotional materials that are not directly connected to the CW’s DCTV set that seem to use Caity Lotz’s likeness as a model). I think a lot of this is unnecessary, and since I am way more familiar with the front end of Arrow than the current back end of it, even though I’m closing the gap, I just felt like making a post sort of addressing this weird, competitive viewpoint that almost views Laurel as having foisted the Black Canary title upon herself, stealing it from Sara or something, when I just don’t think it’s a fair take on it.

Another disclaimer: this post has fuck-all to do with shipping, so check those counterclaims at the door, thanks.

So here are some things that are true in my view that tend to be used as things to back up the claim that Sara is the proper or true Black Canary and that we don’t need or want another one and that Laurel should’ve been removed because no one liked her or that this was a character development for Laurel that was never meant to happen and... so... on:

Per Arrow, Sara was the first Black Canary.

Laurel began the show as a very slightly more competent than typical in self-defense normal.

Both Oliver and Sara had five years of lived experience combat training while Laurel had none to speak of except becoming increasingly more familiar with needing to defend her immediate self from constant threat of danger over the course of the show. Laurel was often sort of presented as a damsel in distress for both Oliver and Sara.

Laurel’s initial attempts at becoming the Black Canary were extremely ill-advised.

The fact that she was allowed out into the field with the rest of Team Arrow as a fully-participant superhero in her own right when she was is a really questionable in-universe decision even if they were going to allow her to become a part of their superhero team due to her relative lack of experience.

This lack of experience is one of the reasons she died, in-universe, possibly.

However, I think that the conclusions that some people draw from this about narrative direction are simply unfair, and I wanted to point out a couple of things that I think tend to show that Laurel was meant to become the Black Canary all along.

See below for a surprisingly humongous post in sections.

Sara

The first thing has to do with Sara’s journey as the Canary/Yellow Bird/Black Canary. All of this had to do with very brutal survival for her, and when she finally did become a hero, it was a journey similar to Oliver’s only with an even more deep and dark background. I do not know when plans for Legends of Tomorrow to exist came into play, and I know that there are critiques that they whitewashed “White Canary” because the White Canary from the comics was an entirely other character who was an Asian woman, but that critique aside what we have in this canon is that Sara was on her way to becoming White Canary. Laurel actually is given a very beautiful line about this when she and Sara are discussing Rip Hunter’s offer to her. She shows Sara the white uniform/costume and Sara asks where the mask is. Laurel tells her she doesn’t need one because it’s time for her to step out of the shadows and into the light. This seems like a very cogent progression of Sara’s character arc.

Sara ran away from the League of Assassins because she finally got to a point where she couldn’t take being a murderer anymore. She came back to Starling City to see that her family was alive after the Undertaking. She had no intentions of staying or of rejoining normal life because she had already become so dangerous and put herself in so much danger that she saw no way out. Then, through staying, she found friends and family and a support system again. This allowed her to begin to step out of mere survival mode. One of the differences for Sara and Oliver in this respect is that Oliver had the respite of a lot more experiences where people were not behaving toward him with ulterior, cruel, or evil motives. Sure, it was punctuated by trauma and needing to do awful things to survive all the time and every time right up until the end, but Oliver’s humanity was not quite so thoroughly eroded as Sara needed to make hers. It isn’t until she returns to Starling that she even begins to unravel that for herself. So when she ultimately passes on the mantel of Black Canary for good, rather than there being two, rather than anything else, this is an evolution for her character and self-perception and a continuing search for more of that becoming more human-again -- not a necessary scramble for a new moniker for her because someone stole hers. It didn’t come out of nowhere.

Had Legends of Tomorrow never come into existence, I’m not sure what they would have done with Sara’s character, but I still don’t think her end goal ever would have been to remain Black Canary forever. For her, it was intimately connected with her chosen name for the League of Assassins and the terrible things she had done to survive. First, she needed to take her identity as it was and use it for good, but then she needed some new dimension to herself, and so I don’t know why people insist that Sara needed to stay the one, the only Black Canary forever. It wasn’t what she wanted.

Laurel

Then, there’s Laurel. I will agree forever with some meta I read several years ago, around the time when I was still eagerly watching S3 before I just rage-quit-because-of-fandom everything I was keeping up with episode-by-episode at the winter hiatus, about comparing the way The Flash was handling Iris in S1 and comparing it to the way Arrow handled Laurel in S1. I think maybe it was in a post that was still defending the possibility of endgame Laurive/r which I don’t really care one way or the other about -- I’m a multishipper; I always shipped Olicit/y; I never didn’t-ship Laurive/r but I also never OTPed it. Anyway, it said something about how making Laurel an “intrepid normal” or “intrepid civilian” at the beginning of Arrow was a serious mistake for her entire character arc.

I’ll admit that I still don’t know why they made her a lawyer unless it was simply to give her a job within the legal system that was different from her father’s. I don’t really know if she has ever had a consistent civilian occupation in the comics - the wiki entry I found said “florist” (lol). I know in Young Justice that she shows some skills for counseling that seem to indicate a background in it, but that could even be a getting-things-past-the-radar allusion to her being in AA for a kids’ show. However, it is still beyond me that they went so far as to make her a very normal, typical noncombatant even though they do give her basic self defense class skills from the very beginning. For example, I’ll never understand, now that we have Dinah Drake, why Laurel couldn’t have been a rookie police officer or something except that they wanted to present a contrast between her and Quentin. But also -- her father in the comics is Larry Lance. Her mother is Dinah Drake. There are all kinds of allusions to the comics layered into Arrow and the CW’s DCTV or “Arrowverse,” even in really unexpected places, but they are not meant to be direct ports. Arrow is, in terms of itself, on its own Earth-1 and it is canonically a distinct reality from many others.

Back to my point, I can see why the fact that she was so deeply entrenched as a civilian at the beginning might make people be suspect of the idea that she was ever “meant to be” Black Canary. That doesn’t mean there weren’t signs though. They go to the trouble to establish in the second episode that Laurel has some self defense skills. “Cop dad, remember?” she reminds Oliver when he seems confused.

Furthermore, choosing a profession for her in the legal system shows us that she already has an investment in her own view of justice. When she finally does try becoming Black Canary, she uses the line, “I'm the justice you can’t run from,” representing a resolution of a very long character arc she had grappling with the morality and necessity of vigilantism. She went from being reluctantly enamored by it in Season 1 to violently opposed to it in Season 2 to finally realizing a need for it and being tempted into trying it out in Season 3. That is a progression of character, not wild inconsistency.

Now I want to talk a little bit about Laurel’s characterization and the way it is characterized by the fandom. There is a lot of mental retconning that goes on for a lot of people. I’m not necessarily blaming anyone; I view fandom as an experience to engage in, and if your fanon is what you prefer, go right ahead. But I think that the writing of Laurel’s character suffered from them keeping her in the dark and clueless for as long as she was about what was going on around her. In Season 2, Laurel is really struggling with what she does know about her life. She has abandonment issues. She is grieving very deeply. She feels guilty. She is developing a substance abuse problem and generally freaking out about her own life while trying to keep an adult and professional face on it.

... And people hated her for it. This was the time when I was most-active in an Arrow fandom that hadn’t splintered off into this faction and that faction at that point. Olicit/y headcanoning and campaigning and wishing was alive and well but hadn’t created its own whole side-fandom. People still watched it weekly and regularly and blogged about it on tumblr without it being justification to judge the viewer. What halcyon tumblr times those were. But anyway. So many people despised Laurel back then. I don’t know if newer fans (uh, are there newer fans?) would even remember.

Most recently, Laurel has been a justification for people to hate Arrow because she’s gone. #NoLaurelNoArrow was a tag protesting her death. Again, I think as with Olicit/y, there’s probably a chicken and egg argument about whether or not the writers responded to fandom outcry to keep Laurel’s character on in some form or if they were already planning to do that. If you know I wouldn’t mind being enlightened. But back in, like, early 2014, “no one” liked Laurel. (’Cept me~)

The main reason they didn’t like Laurel was because she “whined” all the time or was a “bitch” for prioritizing her own emotional angst over the plethora of other problems that were actually far more immediate, pressing, deadly, and overall traumatic. But the thing that people don’t get is that she doesn’t have a bird’s eye view (pun?) on everything going on around her, and the narrative deliberately kept her in the dark for a year longer than it should have.

Wouldn’t it have been more interesting if she’d realized that Oliver was the Hood in the Season 1 finale and then her drinking and vendetta and upset over Tommy and the Hood and everything had an even more personal, complicated edge to it? That’s one retcon/AU headcanon suggestion, but don’t mind me.

Anyway, all of these acknowledged critiques doesn’t mean that there wasn’t always a general direction they were headed with all of this. Laurel and Sara’s gradual reconciliation over the course of the season, culminating in Sara giving Laurel her black leather jacket was character development. The passing of the jacket was foreshadowing. And everyone knew it and made an outcry about how they-could-not-possibly-be-considering-doing-this-this-sucks-so-much because, again, no one liked Laurel. Fast forward two years and many of those same people were quitting the show because Laurel died, but I digress. It was foreshadowing at the end of S2, even when the audience didn’t want it to be.

The Crucible(s)

There’s also the matter of a theme that Arrow has carried around with it literally since the very beginning: the Crucible.

Lian Yu literally means “purgatory.” Oliver constantly describes it and his experiences on “the island” as hellish. We know that he was not always on Lian Yu during those five years, but he was always on “the island” in a metaphorical sense and going through hell. The same was true for Sara. She faced her own trial of fire which made her into a henchmen, a murderer, an antihero-at-best, and finally a hero who operates in the light.

One of the first times we hear Oliver get to talk about his Crucible and the nature of personal crucibles such as they are, the first time that word ‘crucible’ is used, is when he meets and befriends/catches-feelings-for Helena Bertinelli. Helena is convinced that her experience of losing her fiance is the same as whatever crucible Oliver has faced. She has hurt so much that there is no way anyone can outdo her suffering after all. I don’t think Oliver ever thought it was a contest per se, but he tries to convince her that even after all he went through that there has to be another way than being a cold-blooded serial killer, y’know.

Helena refuses to learn that lesson. Nevertheless, she plays a role in showing that many people go through crucibles but not all of them come out changed for the better. We’re not meant to especially like Helena on a narrative level, but she isn’t a filler character necessarily. She’s a minor character, sure, but that’s not the same as filler. She had this purpose -- to tell us about the nature of this kind of suffering and what it can do to people. That is literally the entire Symbol of her character. She recurs because she is that theme recurring.

One of the time she recurs is in the Season 2 episode “Birds of Prey” -- another comic book allusion to the group for which Dinah Laurel Lance is best known. There is no new superhero team formed in that episode, but it is an episode that is making that titular illusion for a reason no less. This episode has Laurel and Helena having several conversations while she is holding Laurel hostage. The actual plot of the episode is, you know, an episode plot, but it shows us how Laurel has grown in her survival skills and in her view of her own survival. Laurel uses her words to communicate with Helena about Tommy’s death and her descent into addiction. Helena tells her “Once you let the darkness inside, it never comes out.”

Laurel adopts and thinks about these words even after this ordeal. She is in a very dark place, and she has been trying to deal with it. Her story actually parallels Helena’s in many ways. Tommy was not her fiance, but there is a sense in which Tommy died in Laurel’s place when she was the person who was at “fault” doing what she believed to be the right thing at the time... just like Helena. I don’t think that this parallel is a totally accidental coincidence. Laurel is being given the opportunity to go through something similar and to use that darkness, that ordeal in a different way than Helena did.

As mentioned above with Sara, it seems that this story uses the mantel of the Black Canary as a sort of place where women who have been through something very dark, very terrible go to make peace and amends. This has been true for Sara, it was why Laurel became the Black Canary, and it remains true through Dinah Drake of Arrow acting as the Black Canary. When Laurel had this thought put in her head by Helena, that was a step closer to doing something like becoming the Black Canary. Sara giving Laurel that jacket was also a symbolic signal and a step closer. Sara’s death was yet another part of that crucible Laurel was being put through. Just because her Crucible didn’t happen somewhere remote and primal doesn’t mean it isn’t a crucible, and I think that is one of the things they were always trying to do with her and it may be why she was still “normal” when the show began. Laurel was meant to go through her own Crucible and to come out the other side as the Black Canary.

Felicity (and Serendipity)

I would be remiss not to at least address Felicity here. I know that I’ve seen photo manipulations and speculation in the past that maybe someday Felicity would become the next Black Canary. Even back when it was being foreshadowed that Laurel one day would take up the mantel (maybe especially then?), people would suggest that Felicity would be a better and more logical choice. I mean, sure 2/3 Black Canaries have been blonde when they were running around in the leather, but other than that, this was a nonsense kind of suggestion. Honestly, too, I think many fans’ desire to see Felicity promoted rather than Laurel was a shipping competition as much as it was anything else.

Felicity is also a good person to bring up here because of her character arc always being one of ascendancy to something no one ever expected her to become on meta and in-universe levels. From my understanding, Felicity was originally intended to be a minor, supporting, comic relief character to give a face to the employees of Queen Consolidated and to have her subplot with Walter and the Hamlet-esque Queen family drama. However, with whomever they Test things with to get reaction, Felicity Tested very well. She was well-received and well-liked and people wanted more of her, and so she kept staying on.

It’s hard to even imagine now because Felicity and the Original Team Arrow feel so deep and integral to the show and its developed mythos at this point. However, I want to point out that Felicity did not actually learn the truth about Oliver and join the original Team Arrow until after the midseason finale of Season 1. Now, again, I don’t actually have my finger on the pulse of the writing staff because I’m just not that kind of fan -- that stuff wears me out -- but that midseason finale thing might be important because it might indicate renegotiation and rewriting of a sort in order to make sure Felicity slotted into the space they’d sort of made for her through experimentation with her interaction with Oliver and John. Before that, “Team Arrow” was literally just Oliver and his “bodyguard.”

Anyway, Felicity was a new cog in the machine. She is and was an original character, as John is and was, and she was not originally intended to stick around. You know, cue the started-from-the-bottom-now-we-here meme. Given that Olicit/y might be a serendipitous thing, but it was completely and totally unplanned until it just started happening and they rolled with it -- if you write fic you know that feeling where your characters just start telling you what to do? I imagine professional writers are a little more shrewd and resistant to their own impulses when they think they could make more money by doing it another way, but Olicit/y is literally one of those “oops my hand slipped and now I have what is (arguably) a masterpiece!” things and people seem to forget that or make it into a point for arrogance when really you should just take the win if you like it.

The Interruption of Laurel’s Destiny

Now, the fact that Felicity was never a planned-on character meant that prior to knowing that Felicity was gonna be there for the long-haul, the writers... did.. have a plan. I am not sure when the various parts of the Arrowverse went into production conceptually, but Arrow was the cornerstone. Whether or not it had been successful enough to spawn its universe of shows, I heard somewhere once that the writers had a plan for six years of the show. (I’m wondering if this will end up voluntarily being the last season, but who knows at this point. More recently I read this sort of platitude-like statement that was like they know how Arrow is gonna end but they can take as long as they want to get there which scares me a lot because i can imagine what I bet it’s gonna be but that is a different and terrible point for another day.) And yeah, the six years thing makes sense. They wanted to do the parallel plots of the present and the “island” flashbacks for five seasons, and then they wanted at least a season for epilogue -- fair enough. And for so long, I’d thought that maybe they’d abandoned that plan altogether, but whatever this was I was told my best friend had read included allusions to a lot of the things such as William’s current role and so on. So basically, I don’t think they ever abandoned or changed their plan; they adapted it.

They adapted it to include Felicity, yes. However, they also didn’t adapt it to include Laurel in a new way but still chose not to get rid of her. Now, I’m glad they didn’t do that. I liked-Laurel-before-it-was-cool and everything. But the issue was not that they never had a plan for Laurel or that they changed it in terms of her becoming Black Canary. What happened was that she was clearly originally intended to be Oliver’s endgame love interest. But they fumbled it. Even before they decided to do anything with Felicity that we know of, they fumbled it.

They fumbled it by giving them such a big thing as what happened to Sara to be their big obstacle to overcome. It’s too big. They fumbled it by going to the trouble of almost bypassing the typical love triangle bullshit until right at the end of Season 1 to keep you guessing. They fumbled it by making Tommy ultimately still extremely-admirable. They fumbled it by writing the fact that Tommy, Laurel, and Oliver all cared really deeply about each other actually really well. They fumbled it by giving us the one really actually-moving and not just sentimental, confused soup of nostalgia (which was fine but like y’know not convincing romantic development) moment between Oliver and Laurel happen right before Oliver was about to go tank it forever by “getting Tommy killed” backlit by that stupid sunlight framing thing they do. I say that moment is the Moment because before that we were literally given nothing but the most oblique allusions for what on earth Laurel and Oliver saw in each other apart from “bad boy I can fix because he’s not an irredeemable monster” and “pretty girl who never stops giving me chances.” They did a very good job of early and often letting us know why Tommy and Laurel liked each other and did nothing to give us a convincing love triangle (thank God, but also, it make this thing Not Work). They fumbled it by making Tommy and Laurel’s relationship so precious that Laurive/r looked pale and sad and like people trying to cling desperately to something lost and miserable in comparison. I’ve heard people say that Green Arrow/Black Canary is kind of supposed to be two human disasters who keep staying together or ending up back together over and over again even though it’s a mess, but they got... almost there... but never had the stomach for it, and the obstacles and comparisons they gave us were just too much for them to ever move past it unless they’d gone a far grittier place with it than they were ever willing to go. They gave it the old college try, but they backpedaled because they knew they fucked up.

(Side note: I would remind current fans that the Arrow school of writing romance seems to have a steep learning curve in this regard because when they canonized Olicit/y it became such a soup of crying and high romance there for a little while that it broke the fandom in half or more pieces and that they literally broke Olicit/y up for a while so as to get the show back on track before they touched it again. I’m happy with Olicit/y now, but this is not a Laurel-problem it’s a what-do-you-think-romance-IS thing @ the Writers. I bring this up as a defense of her but also because it’s also unclear if the beginning of Season 2 Oliver and Laurel interaction was a backpedal from which they intended to consider recovering from or if they had already decided against it but were keeping Laurel on as an important character anyway. Either might be true, but a part of me is scared that it was the former.)

When the dust settled and by the time Laurel was finally ready to begin taking her place in the narrative as Black Canary, Olicit/y had already started taking root. It was not to spite Laurel, but it also kind of didn’t help her. I still think you need to see Olicit/y as an independent development for the most part. The problem was and still is that they failed to figure out what they were going to do with Laurel instead. Laurel had one of the most richly developed background lives and jobs of any of the characters. She had friends who were minor supporting characters off and on. Her job impacted plots on the show. Her relationship to her job drove some of her own philosophical self-searching. Overall, she had a lot to work with, but they... didn’t work with it.

Anytime she had a love interest, he died (Tommy), was fundamentally too broken and misaligned with her to make it work whatever he wanted (Oliver), was evil (Sebastian Blood), and so on. Within the show, they never gave her anything that would work for her. A girl doesn’t need a love interest to be on a show, as we should all know, but this is a branch of a root problem with how they handled Laurel after Olicit/y started to develop. There was nothing wrong with Laurel no longer being Oliver’s planned endgame love interest. In fact, I find their dynamic as people who cared about each other and stayed-friends-anyway in the end interesting (which is why I hate her last words even though they could have so easily acknowledged that dynamic without Laurel throwing herself under the bus while praising Olicit/y when no one thought she had a problem with them in the first place but yeah).

The writers followed through on what appears to be their whole plan with her becoming Black Canary. Right down to her also responding to domestic violence suffered by another to initially motivate her the way Sara protected women down in the Glades. Laurel being intended to be the Black Canary was never the failure; it was the fact that Laurel was no longer intended to be the love interest and they didn’t know what to do with her on a personal level. I can think of suggestions that would have made me happy, but that’s for fic and another time and place. Laurel died for the in-universe reasons they give us, but on a meta level she didn’t die because she was a shitty superhero or because she wasn’t meant to be one. She died because we’re still living with her ghost today in the ways in which that six-year plan didn’t conform and adjust to make room for a personal life for Laurel Lance after Felicity joined the cast. I wouldn’t trade Felicity for anything, but I’d trade a lot of unnecessary subplots to give Laurel her life back.

(Final note: You want to come at us with the Laurel had no training and should never have been out in the field and blahblahblah but I just point you to Roy Harper and Thea Queen. Laurel is not the only offender.)

#Laurel Lance #arrowmeta #arrow meta #arrow #dctvmeta #dctv #dctv meta #Sara Lance #Felicity Smoak #Oliver Queen #Helena Bertinelli #mine #long post

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mathematicianadda · 4 years ago

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Coding Stories: Programming Polygons https://ift.tt/3eyZ6FV

In this guest post, Greg Benedis-Grab shares the story of when he discovered Pick’s Theorem, and how he coded an interactive version to play with.

Have you ever been intoxicated by a mathematical theorem? Well that’s what happened to a class of 9th grade geometry students at my school. Their enthusiastic teacher showed them Pick’s theorem.

“What is Pick’s Theorem?” I asked after she described the reaction of her students. So she showed me an example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick%27s_theorem

Using a lattice of nails and a rubber band, you can create geometric shapes where each vertex is located on a lattice point. As she was telling me about it I remembered this fun math manipulative from my own Elementary school days. The theorem requires you to categorize some of the lattice points as boundary points, b and interior points, i. The expression for the area is given below.

\[\textcolor{red}{i=7} \qquad \textcolor{green}{b=8}\]

\[A = \textcolor{red}{i} + \frac{\textcolor{green}{b}}{2}\ – 1 = 10\]

That is a pretty surprising result – at least, that is what the 9th grade students thought. I will leave the proof of this to the mathematicians. Here is a link to a particularly engaging mathematician doing just that. I am more interested in displaying colorful shapes in the browser so I decided it would make for a nice p5.js sketch. To get this project started I needed a very simple case. Say you have a 10×10 grid and the simplest of polygons, the triangle.

A triangle is defined by its three vertices. To organize my code I will create a Vetex class to store the x,y values for each vertex in the triangle.

class Vertex { constructor(x, y) { this.x = x; this.y = y; } show(spacing) { fill(200); // light grey circle around each vertex circle(this.x*spacing, this.y*spacing,30); } }

The spacing variable allows me to space out the grid points according to the window size. Next I decided to draw all the grid points on the screen.

function drawBoard(spacing) { stroke(0); strokeWeight(8); for (let i=0;i<10;i++) { for (let j=0;j<10;j++) { point(i*spacing,j*spacing); } } }

Finally, I need to draw and fill in the triangle. I included this code in the draw loop to do so.

fill(135,180,70,100); // green strokeWeight(2); stroke(255,0,255); // violet beginShape(); vertices.forEach((v)=>vertex(v.x*spacing, v.y*spacing)); let v = vertices[0]; vertex(v.x*spacing, v.y*spacing); endShape();

I also added the ability to drag vertices to new positions. To do this I included the following methods to the Vertex class

mousePressed(mouse) { let pos = createVector(this.x*spacing, this.y*spacing); pos.add(offset); // offset allows the lattice to be centered if (pos.dist(mouse) < 30) { this.dragging = true; // assigns Vertex attribute } } update() { if (this.dragging) { let x = int(mouseX/spacing -0.5); let y = int(mouseY/spacing - 0.5)-1; if (x>=0 && x<10 && y>=0 && y<10) { this.x = x; this.y = y; } } }

The dragging attribute indicates that one of the vertices is being dragged and should update its position with the mouse. The fact that the vertices are objects means that each of the vertex objects has its own dragging attribute and can be independently dragged. Objects will also allow me later to scale up this project to have an arbitrary number of vertices in my shape. Finally, I had to add the following functions to sketch.js in order to handle the click events. The first defines a predefined mousePressed() function that subsequently passed the mouse position to an identically named method in the Vertex class. That method checks if the mouse event occurred on the given vertex. The second removes the dragging attribute from all vertices when the mouse is released.

function mousePressed() { let mouse = createVector(mouseX,mouseY); // makes new triangle when title is clicked if (mouseY<0) makeTriangle(); vertices.forEach((v)=>v.mousePressed(mouse)); }function mouseReleased() { for (let v of vertices) if (v.dragging) delete v.dragging; }

Finally I made sure the update() and show() methods are run for each vertex object.

vertices.forEach((v)=>{ v.show(); v.update(); });

And that creates the following exciting web app. Go ahead and make some triangles.

Of course at this point all I have created is a triangle generator. We have not yet explored Pick’s Theorem. To do that I need to determine which lattice points are on the boundary and which points are interior. Before moving to this important step I cleaned up the code. It is important to take time to clean up your code as you expand it. Otherwise it can become unwieldy and impossible to debug. Well organized code can make complex problems simple and elegant to solve. The simplicity of the code often hides the hard work that goes into simplifying it and finding the right organization. The organization scheme serves as a foundation upon which new functionality can be built. I added a Triangle class and a Board class to modularize the program making my methods and attributes easy to manipulate.

class Triangle { constructor() { this.vertices = []; while(this.vertices.length<3) { const x = int(random(board.w)); const y = int(random(board.h)); const v = new Vertex(x,y); // only add the point if it is not on another one. if (!this.isVertex(x,y)) this.vertices.push(v); } } isVertex(i,j) { for (let v of this.vertices) { if (i == v.i && j == v.j) return true; } return false; } update() { this.vertices.forEach((v)=>v.update()); } show() { // draw the triangle as shown previously } }class Board { constructor() {} // set up board and creates a triangle obj. showLattice() {} // draws the lattice points update() { this.triangle.update(); } menu() {} // group all the menu info together show() { this.triangle.show(); this.showLattice(); this.menu(); } }

Next I spent a fair amount of time thinking about how to mathematically define the boundary and the interior of the shape. I needed a good algorithm to accomplish this task. This is where the story gets interesting.

Computers can solve challenging mathematical problems. They perform calculations at astonishing speeds. The tricky part of this problem is that I am not sure what calculation needs to be performed. If I have a point (x,y) how will I know if it is on the boundary of my shape, inside of my shape or neither of these two conditions. To be honest I first stared at the problem for a long time. Then I noticed that the triangle has three line segments associated with it that can be drawn between pairs of vertices. These three lines can be expressed as linear equations. For points in the lattice that are located on one of the three line segments they are by definition boundary points. Checking the slope and that the points coordinates lie between the segment endpoint coordinates should be sufficient. Here is how I wrote the code.

colinear(i,j,a,b) {return (j-a.j)*(b.i-a.i) == (b.j-a.j)*(i-a.i);} inbounds(i,j,a,b) { return i >= min([a.i,b.i]) && i <= max([a.i,b.i]) && j >= min([a.j,b.j]) && j <= max([a.j,b.j]); }isBoundary(x,y) { let v0 = this.vertices[0]; let v1 = this.vertices[1]; let v2 = this.vertices[2]; // checks if it is on any of the 3 line segments return (this.colinear(x,y,v0,v1) && this.inbounds(x,y,v0,v1) || this.colinear(x,y,v1,v2) && this.inbounds(x,y,v1,v2) || this.colinear(x,y,v2,v0) && this.inbounds(x,y,v2,v0)) }

For the interior points I can simply check that the given lattice point satisfies the inequality for the three line segments that make up the triangle. Then I wondered, how do I know which side of the inequality is correct. The third point of the triangle, the point that is not part of the given edge should match the correct inequality for the given point. In other words if the lattice point is on the same side of the line as the third point then it satisfies that edge’s inequality. Now I just need to test all three edges and I can define the interior lattice points for the triangle. Here is how I coded this in the Triangle class.

inEq(x,y) {return (j-a.j)*(b.i-a.i) < (b.j-a.j)*(i-a.i);} isInterior(x,y) { let v0 = this.vertices[0]; let v1 = this.vertices[1]; let v2 = this.vertices[2]; //check that the point has the same inequality outcome as the 3rd //point for each of the line segments. return (this.inEq(x,y,v0,v1) == this.inEq(v2.x,v2.y,v0,v1) && this.inEq(x,y,v1,v2) == this.inEq(v0.x,v0.y,v1,v2) && this.inEq(x,y,v2,v0) == this.inEq(v1.x,v1.y,v2,v0))

Now my app can show the number of green interior points and pink boundary points and count them on the top of the screen. I also added some animation movement to the triangle and a slider to control the speed of the animation.

This is a fun way to explore Pick’s Theorem. A teacher might use it to have students explore various triangles and see if they can come up with the theorem themselves. They can also look for patterns in the two output values to gain more insight into triangles. So one way that p5 can transform student mathematical thinking is to create a catalogue of engaging sketches such as these. Even better mathematics teachers can make their own sketches to target learning based on their knowledge about the students in their classes. For me the real learning happened when I tried to write the sketch myself. Getting the program to work deepened my level of geometric understanding and gave me an appreciation for Pick’s theorem.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to incorporate this kind of work in our high school math courses because of how much time it consumes. In addition to figuring out the mathematics I had to spend a fair amount of time debugging my code making sure that my calculations were working as expected. A number of times I had to debug the code and think systematically through the program to find my own error. The debugging process was equal in intellectual rigor to the rules I created for the inequalities. Especially since many math teachers and students are not as comfortable with coding as I am this aspect of the process could dominate and stifle the math learning. However despite these challenges I think it is still worth thinking about how we can use problems like this in math class to deepen student thinking and make the process of mathematics more playful and interactive.

The teacher who introduced this problem to me was nice enough to invite me in to her class to share my web app. I first talked to them a little about p5 and how you make shapes on the screen. Then I explained the dilemma with defining the boundary points and the interior points. I challenged them to develop their own algorithmic steps to make this determination for each lattice point. They came up with my solution very quickly. I was a bit humbled by how long it had taken me. Once they explained their algorithm I showed them how I coded it using JavaScript. They wanted to extend the idea to polygons with more than three vertices. We quickly realized that for convex polygons the same approach would work. I just had to come up with a way to handle more vertices. So I wrote the following loop to find all the edges of a polygon defined by an array of vertices. Notice that I renamed the attribute .triangle to now be .polygon

vs = board.polygon.vertices; for (let i = 0, j = vs.length - 1; i < vs.length; j = i++) { // each iteration of the loop will identify a unique edge // defined by the points vs[i] and vs[j] }

With this loop I can now check all the edges to see if a lattice point is a boundary point. I can also perform my inequality function on all the edges to see if it is interior (though I also need to pick one of the non-colinear points). Since I used a Vertex class to define the vertices and stored them in an array in the triangle shape it was fairly straightforward to change the name of the class to Polygon and adjust the length of the .vertices attribute in the Polygon object. By using an object oriented approach I was able to quickly scale up my idea to all possible lattice polygons.

However my definition of interior points becomes problematic when one of the vertices is concave. In that case one of the rays that extends from the edge intersects the interior of the shape making it more challenging to use the inequality to define the interior. It is possible that we can work around this using a more complex set of Boolean expressions.

Instead I shared with the class a new way to define the interior of a polygon. Ray casting is an elegant way to determine if a point is inside of a polygon. Draw a ray starting at each lattice point to infinity. If the ray passes through an odd number of edges it is interior. Otherwise it is not. If we simply draw a horizontal ray to the right we can algebraically determine the number of crossings. Here is the code I used to determine if a lattice point is inside the polygon defined by the array board.polygon.vertices

let inside = false; vs = board.polygon.vertices; for (let i = 0, j = vs.length - 1; i < vs.length; j = i++) { let xi = vs[i].i, yi = vs[i].j; let xj = vs[j].i, yj = vs[j].j; let intersect=((yi > y) != (yj > y)) && (x < (xj - xi) * (y - yi) / (yj - yi) + xi); if (intersect) inside = !inside; }

With this new algorithm I created a new app using the p5.js editor.

https://editor.p5js.org/gbenedisgrab/sketches/jAIo-Tzev

I let the class play with this new and improved Pick’s Theorem Tool. By the way I added new features so that you can click on a boundary point to make it a vertex. I also made it possible to double click a vertex to remove it. I asked them to explore different shapes and see whether Pick’s theorem always holds and to specifically find when Pick’s theorem does not work. For example if you have a complex polygon (a polygon with edges that intersect) the theorem no longer holds. I then challenged them to find a new expression for complex polygons.

This exploration led to a surprising amount of sophistication. Some students realized that the ray casting rule did not always exactly match the way p5 filled a polygon shape. I might want to explore p5’s algorithm to see how it is defined. Another student noticed that sometimes a ray from an interior point can pass through a vertex and one side of a polygon. This raises an important idea about what it means to pass through an odd number of edges. Additional students worked on coming up with a new algebraic Pick’s expression for complex polygons.

To finish off this article I decided to pursue the intersection between aesthetic beauty and mathematical expression. I decided to create rays that travel across the screen along horizontal paths. Every time the ray passes through a lattice point it will determine how to classify it based on the logic described above – if it lies on the line segment of an edge, it is filled with pink, and if it has passed through an odd number of edges then it is green. Otherwise it is filled with black.

I gave the sketch a radar-like aesthetic, where defined lattice points slowly fade after they are marked. I also lit up the edges as the rays crossed them. Finally I made the polygon randomly transform over time creating a hopefully pleasing dot pattern progression. I will not explain this code in depth, but it is accessible through the glitch sketch linked below.

from The Aperiodical https://ift.tt/3fTHAwj Greg Benedis-Grab from Blogger https://ift.tt/31bh9y2

#Blogger

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jonathanalumbaugh · 7 years ago

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Weekly Digest

Dec 9, 2017, 2nd issue.

A roundup of stuff I consumed this week. Topics this week leaned heavily towards design, design thinking, with a smattering of research methods-related articles.

Read

5 Prototyping lessons from a BMX backflip

The false art of the feed has been deconstructed before (see: the excellent recent expose by The New Yorker’s Rachel Monroe that reveals the depressing reality behind the bohemian #vanlife movement), but less has been said about the deeper effects it’s had on our collective mental health. For designers and other people who work digitally, the so-called “internet effect” goes particularly deep, but just how deep, and what that might mean for our waking life is hard to tell at this point.

10 Creative Women Reveal Their Deepest Feelings in RoAndCo’s New Romance Journal—Here’s What We Learned

Echo’s voice-activated features are great for seniors with dementia:

Instantly answers questions, like “what day is it?” or “what time is it?” — it’s a machine, so it will never get annoyed or frustrated!

Plays music and read audiobooks and the news — no need to fuss with complicated controls

Looks up information about anything — like, “what’s playing on TV tonight?”

AMAZON ECHO FOR DEMENTIA: TECHNOLOGY FOR SENIORS

[Mies Van Der Rohe,] pioneer of modernism discusses the Bauhaus as well as his own individual work, all of it interesting to anyone with an inclination toward midcentury European-American architecture and design, none of it ultimately more relevant than the final words the master speaks: "I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good."

An Oral History of the Bauhaus: Hear Rare Interviews (in English) with Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe & More

Persuasion is at the core of norm creation, emergence of collective action, and solutions to ‘tragedy of the commons’ problems. In this paper, we show that the directionality of friendship ties affect the extent to which individuals can influence the behavior of each other. Moreover, we find that people are typically poor at perceiving the directionality of their friendship ties and that this can significantly limit their ability to engage in cooperative arrangements. This could lead to failures in establishing compatible norms, acting together, finding compromise solutions, and persuading others to act. We then suggest strategies to overcome this limitation by using two topological characteristics of the perceived friendship network. The findings of this paper have significant consequences for designing interventions that seek to harness social influence for collective action.

Are You Your Friends’ Friend? Poor Perception of Friendship Ties Limits the Ability to Promote Behavioral Change

Creation knows no multitasking.

Before I Begin

For decades, policymakers have been concerned that poor people will waste free money by using it on cigarettes and alcohol. A report on the perception of stakeholders in Kenya about such programs found a “widespread belief that cash transfers would either be abused or misdirected in alcohol consumption and other non-essential forms of consumption.”

The opposite is true, according to a recently published research paper(paywall) by David Evans of the World Bank and Anna Popova of Stanford University.

Definitive data on what poor people buy when they’re just given cash

Some blame human beings’ basic optimism, if not egocentrism, for the disconnect between perceived and actual friendships. Others point to a misunderstanding of the very notion of friendship in an age when “friend” is used as a verb, and social inclusion and exclusion are as easy as a swipe or a tap on a smartphone screen. It’s a concern because the authenticity of one’s relationships has an enormous impact on one’s health and well-being...

[Ronald Sharp] recalled the many hours he spent in engrossing conversation with his friend Eudora Welty, who was known not only for her Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction but also for her capacity for friendship. Together they edited “The Norton Book of Friendship,” an anthology of works on the topic. “The notion of doing nothing but spending time in each other’s company has, in a way, become a lost art,” replaced by volleys of texts and tweets, Mr. Sharp said. “People are so eager to maximize efficiency of relationships that they have lost touch with what it is to be a friend.”

Do Your Friends Actually Like You?

Dina D. Pomeranz tweet

The next step is this: you have to commit to make a proportional investment in corrective action at every level of the analysis. So, in the example above, we'd have to take five corrective actions...

Because the most common problems keep recurring, your prevention efforts are automatically focused on the 20% of your product that needs the most help. That's also the same 20% that causes you to waste the most time. So five whys pays for itself awfully fast, and it makes life noticeably better almost right away. All you have to do is get started.

Five Whys

We started with a simple wiki page with a few bullet points of things that new engineers had tripped over recently. As we kept doing root cause analysis, the list grew. In response to Five Whys that noticed that not all new engineers were reading the list, we expanded it into a new engineer curriculum. Soon, each new engineer was assigned a mentor, and we made it part of the mentor’s job to teach the curriculum. Over time, we also made investments in making it easier to get a new engineer set up with their private sandbox, and even dealt with how to make sure they’d have a machine on their desk when they started. The net effect of all this was to make new engineers incredibly productive right away – in most cases, we’d have them deliver code to production on their very first day. We never set out to build a world-class engineering-training process. Five Whys simply helped us eliminate tons of waste by building one.

How to conduct a Five Whys root cause analysis

On social media, it is easy to mistake popularity for credibility, and that is exactly what the fakers are hoping for. To most people, a Twitter account with tens of thousands of followers is an easy-to-read indication of personal success and good reputation, a little like hundreds of good reviews on Yelp or a long line outside a restaurant.

How to become internet famous for $68

It’s important designers aren’t the only people in the product organization to feel responsible for the user experience. I’ve made it a point to work with our field team to get more employees visiting clinics, and looking into ways to make patient stories and issues known throughout the company. I love having a team of engineers who will often jump in and defend our user before I’m even aware of an issue (one developer, in particular, handled a lot of debates against requests for a particular modal, dubbed by him: “the nuclear option.” Knowing he was there to defend the user, I didn’t even need to get involved.)

Interviews aren’t the only way to gain empathy

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

Pareto Principle

"I think harm reduction is not giving up on people," said Goulão. "I think it is respecting their timings and assuming that even if someone is still using drugs, that person deserves the investment of the state in order to have a better and longer life."

Portugal’s Example: What Happened After It Decriminalized All Drugs, From Weed to Heroin

The 5 Whys Process We Use to Understand the Root of Any Problem

People are “groupish,” and we tend to form groups automatically. Some have argued that this is due in large part to humans’ tribal past and evolutionary development. Regardless of why we are this way, the descriptive truth is that this is how we are.

The Office Finale’s ‘Miraculous’ Quote — The Scientific Truth Behind It

We share stuff that ignores wider realities, selectively shares information, or is just an outright falsehood. The misinformation is so rampant that the Washington Post stopped publishing its internet fact-checking column because people didn’t seem to care if stuff was true.

The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

Providing cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to women in rural Pakistan who were suffering from perinatal depression has had persistent positive effects on their mental health, their parenting behaviour and their financial empowerment seven years later.

TREATING MATERNAL DEPRESSION: Evidence of the impact on mental health, parenting, financial autonomy and child development

One useful technique is to map ideas on a risk/reward space. Those that score high on both risk and reward are considered moonshots, the high potential ideas. Ideas low on both risk and reward are safe bets. Moving along ideas in the different quadrants of the risk/reward space (with the possible of exception of high risk/low reward) preserves innovation potential.

When brainstorming fails, throw an imaginary cat

Last month, the Pew Research Center released a study showing that nearly a third of those who went to graduate or professional school have “down the line” liberal views on social, economic and environmental matters, whereas this is true for just one in 10 Americans generally. An additional quarter of postgrads have mostly liberal views. These numbers reflect drastic change: While professionals have been in the Democratic column for a while, in 1994 only 7 percent of postgrads held consistently liberal political opinions.

Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. The use of the term "wicked" here has come to denote resistance to resolution, rather than evil. Another definition is "a problem whose social complexity means that it has no determinable stopping point". Moreover, because of hard interdependencies, the effort to fix one part of a wicked problem may open or create other problems.

Wicked problem

Looked at

Satire and Social Activism Come Alive in Images of Death

Watched

youtube

How small a hole can a mouse get through? Experiments.

vimeo

Mies Van Der Rohe - Architecture as language

youtube

Mouse trap maze experiments

youtube

Pride and Prejudice, Antidote and Antivenom

youtube

See How Easily a Rat Can Wriggle Up Your Toilet | National Geographic

Free stuff

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thomasroach · 5 years ago

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Cyberpunk 2077: The Game of the Decade

The post Cyberpunk 2077: The Game of the Decade appeared first on Fextralife.

Recently we were given the opportunity to check out an updated build of Cyberpunk at E3 2019 (now with more Keanu Reeves) though we did see 2 demos last summer. The game looked better than ever, and in this article I want to tell you why Cyberpunk is the game of the decade. Sit back, jack-in and let me explain why you probably won’t see another game like this for a long time based on everything we’ve seen so far.

Cyberpunk 2077: The Game of the Decade

Cyberpunk 2077 gives nearly unlimited freedom in the way you handle quests and characters, which really reminds me of the Fallout games during their heyday. However, Cyberpunk 2077 takes this concept of player choice and brings it home on an unprecedented scale. It isn’t simply that you can follow a quest line, changing your mind about who to help and how to handle it (just about as many times as you could in real life). It’s also about the variety of ways you can approach each quest that will be highly determined by your character Build.

You Don’t Have to Kill

I always felt in Fallout that you could make an intellectual (or charismatic) character, that didn’t focus on violence, but that you were always at a disadvantage in doing so. This is because the game has a moderate amount of combat, and getting into a fight was simply inevitable. This created periodic hardships for this type of character Build. However, in Cyberpunk 2077 this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Much of this issue is rectified by the gunplay of Cyberpunk, but also because of things like Hacking. Hacking allows the player to take control of enemies or objects and turn them against other enemies. This allows them a way to “fight” without being experts in combat themselves, and makes this style of play more accommodating. One particularly interesting thing to note, as well, is that it is entirely possible to beat Cyberpunk 2077 without killing a single person. Or so CD Projekt Red says anyway…

Polished to the Max

Another really amazing aspect to Cyberpunk 2077 is the amount of polish the game already has. Now this may be downgraded at release, and many people suspect that it will, but if it isn’t…forget about it. The closest thing I’ve seen to this type of polish in a game is the recent God of War or maybe Last of Us, and both of those games won Game of the Year. If CD Projekt Red can keep the level of refinement and detail they have shown in their 2 uniquely different demos then I can’t see this game getting less than a 10 from most major outlets. In fact, it’s the only game I can think of that is likely to receive a perfect score by more outlets than it isn’t. Queue Kotaku and Polygon complaints here…

The graphics of the game are excellent, and though not the best I have seen in a game, the level of detail is outstanding. Things run smoothly, characters look and feel realistic, nothing ever jumps out at you to pull you from the immersion. Take The Outer Worlds, which is probably the most similar game releasing within 6 months of Cyberpunk, and it’s a totally the opposite.

While the gameplay looks very good, the poor character animations and odd graphical design choice, leave much to be desired. This detracts heavily from that sense of immersion, and that is a game being developed by Obsidian, which has a relatively stellar track record within the gaming community. I’d wager that Cyberpunk will be 2 to 3 times better than The Outer Worlds at launch, which is staggering…

Freedom and Customization

As mentioned earlier, players will have an unparalleled amount of freedom when it comes to playing Cyberpunk 2077, and they can be the hero or villain. And that can change at the drop of a hat, as players acquire new information that may sway their decisions, or make them have a change of heart.

The main protagonist, V, is very much a neutral character by design, only doing what is necessary to survive. This allows for you to take control, and really determine if what he/she is doing is enjoyable, or loathed, and decide if you wish to change that or not. This isn’t something that is new in gaming, but is certainly a must have for any game to be considered mind blowing.

In addition, players can customize their appearance separately from their equipment, so you can look as badass as you want, without having to worry about which gear to wear. Gear works very similarly to other RPGs with slots for each type of equipment, allowing players to change gear on the fly, with many different types of weapons, but little in the way of Armor. This is one area that is still very much a mystery, as not much has been shown in this regard. However, assuming they don’t do anything too drastic, it will likely be good enough.

Keanu Fucking Reeves

Hollywood and the gaming industry have been on a collision course for some time now, but no one has managed to implement a celebrity in the manner that Cyberpunk 2077 does. Destiny featured Peter Dinklage as the Ghost that helps the Guardian, providing modestly witty dialogue, and Cyberpunk 2077 takes it to a whole new level.

Not only is Keanu Reeves the “Ghost” of Cyberpunk 2077, but you see him constantly in all his “excellence” when he speaks. While this is certainly not a “reason” to purchase the game, and I would never recommend the game simply because of this one aspect, this sort of thing creates even more hype and interest. And if I must say, it works exceptionally well within the gameplay of Cyberpunk, and doesn’t seem like a forced addition in the slightest. I honestly look forward to seeing him more in my own playthrough, while I look at pictures of him on my phone from E3.

Final Thoughts

There is a lot of hype surrounding Cyberpunk 2077, and it’s very easy to get caught up in it and overlook the game’s faults. Objective journalism is becoming a thing of the past, and when you start adding celebrities to the mix, this only becomes more true. Everyone wants to make friends with rising stars, and Keanu Reeves, and so it becomes difficult to criticize games. I have always tried to maintain some semblance of objectivity, though difficult. Witness my recent shredding of The Outer Worlds, which I’m sure didn’t win me any brownie points with Obsidian. So when I say this game may be the best in the past 10 years, it doesn’t come lightly.

Time will tell if I’m right or not, but all indications are that it will be even better than what we’ve seen, and that is something that is frankly hard to fathom. If you have not got caught up in the hype yet, or you are holding out until you see more gameplay, I fully understand. However, just let me say, you will be eventually. Fucking help us in April of next year, because it will absolute mayhem.

Stay tuned for more Cyberpunk 2077 content as we explore how a board game becomes a video game, and be sure to check out the Cyberpunk 2077 Wiki for all information that is currently known.

The post Cyberpunk 2077: The Game of the Decade appeared first on Fextralife.

Cyberpunk 2077: The Game of the Decade published first on https://juanaframi.tumblr.com/

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paulrfrank · 6 years ago

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Comment response detailing systematic efforts by U.S. and others to undermine Venezuela’s government

I tried to dive into the topic and take a fresh look at it. Thanks for the comment about nationalization — I wasn't aware of the extent of it (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-election-nationalizations/factbox-venezuelas-nationalizations-under-chavez-idUSBRE89701X20121008). I first looked at Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortages_in_Venezuela) which provided analysis closer to your analysis than mine. There were a number of statements that didn't seem . . . shall we say "balanced." Then I came to this statement: "Gasoline was also rationed allegedly because subsidized Venezuelan gasoline was being smuggled to Colombia where it was sold for a higher price." I live in Colombia in the first major city after the border city of Cucuta, and Venezuelan gasoline is a major underground business here. I can't drive up the hill without several "gentlemen" coming out and waving their sticks with an empty liter soda bottle on the end of it, the well-recognized symbol for bargain Venezuelan gas for sale. There is nothing "alleged" about the large scale sale of Venezuelan gas in Colombia. To be clear, the problem is NOT that the Wikipedia article providing false information, but rather the systematic bias of the main author's perspective in this article. (More on this later.) So I decided to dig deeper. For simplicity, I will simply paste in a bunch of highlights from three different sources that address the "economic warfare" Maduro complained about. (At the end, I have included a media-bias-fact-check report for the three main sources for your convenience. Skip over it if you don't care.) I apologize for the length of my response. I have put what I believe most important in bold and inserted some comments in italics. Feel free to peruse the bold parts with more detail available when you want it. First, the FAIR.org (Facts & Accuracy in Reporting) article: Likewise, the local US-backed opposition’s role in the economic crisis is barely mentioned. The opposition, which controls much of the country’s food supply, has officially accepted responsibility for conducting an “economic war” by withholding food and other key goods. [See following excerpt from venezuelanalysis.com] For example, the monolithic Empresas Polar controls the majority of the flour production and distribution crucial for making arepa cornbread, Venezuela’s staple food. Polar’s chair is Leopoldo Lopez, national coordinator of Juan Guaidó’s Popular Will party, while its president is Lorenzo Mendoza, who considered running for president against Maduro in the 2018 elections that caused pandemonium in the media (FAIR.org, 5/23/18). Conspicuously, it’s the products that Polar has a near-monopoly in that are often in shortest supply. This is hardly a secret, but never mentioned in the copious stories (CNN, 5/14/14, Bloomberg, 3/16/17, Washington Post, 5/22/17, NPR, 4/7/17) focusing on bread lines in the country. Also rarely commented on was the fact that multiple international election observer missions declared the 2018 elections free and fair, and that Venezuelan government spending as a proportion of GDP (often considered a barometer of socialism) is actually lower than the US’s, and far lower than most of Europe’s, according to the conservative Heritage Foundation. [To be fair, this has hurt Venezuela's credit rating — and hence what it pays for debt service. While the U.S. has done what they could to contribute to this, the drop in the price of oil has done the most harm here. (But the U.S. actually is part of that also. More below.)] Regardless of these bothersome facts, the media has continued to present Venezuela’s supposedly socialist dictatorship as solely responsible for its crisis as a warning to any progressives who get the wrong idea. So useful is this tool that it is being used to attack progressive movements around the world. The Daily Express (2/3/19) and Daily Mail (2/3/19) condemned UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for his “defense” of a “dictator,” while the Daily Telegraph (2/3/19) warned that the catastrophe of Venezuela is Labour’s blueprint for Britain. Meanwhile, the Greek leftist party Syriza’s support for Maduro (the official position of three-quarters of UN member states) was condemned as “shameful” (London Independent, 1/29/19). “Venezuela” is also used as a one-word response to shut down debate and counter any progressive idea or thought. While the panel on ABC’s The View (7/23/18) discussed progressive legislation like Medicare for All and immigration reform, conservative regular Meghan McCain responding by invoking Venezuela: “They’re starving to death” she explained, leaving the other panelists bemused. President Trump has also used it. In response to criticism from Senator Elizabeth Warren over his “Pocahontas” jibe, he replied that she would “make our country into Venezuela” (Reuters, 10/15/18). The weapon’s effectiveness can only be sustained through a media in lockstep with the government’s regime-change goals. That the media is fixated on the travails of a relatively small and unimportant country in America’s “backyard,” and that the picture of Venezuela is so shallow, is not a mistake. Rather, the simplistic narrative of a socialist dictatorship starving its own people provides great utility as a weapon for the establishment to beat back the domestic “threat” of socialism, by associating movements and figures such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jeremy Corbyn with an evil caricature they have carefully crafted. (https://fair.org/home/venezuela-medias-one-word-rebuttal-to-the-threat-of-socialism/) ______ Next, the venezuelanalysis.com article reporting on the agreement acknowledging the opposition's participation in "economic warfare." From the Vatican-led negotiations, "Both sides also agreed to design a series of policies to aid cooperation efforts between the public and private sectors to “monitor, tax and control” the acquisition and distribution of goods. "The public statement is the first time that the MUD[4-party opposition coalition] has officially accepted the government’s assertions that it is the victim of an economic boycott." ______ Thirdly, from COUNTERPUNCH: Mint Press’s Caleb Maupin has blamed the U.S. for the collapse in oil prices in 2014, noting that U.S. ally Saudi Arabia flooded the market with cheap oil in order “to weaken those opponents of Wall Street, London, and Tel Aviv, whose economies are centered around [state-owned] oil and natural gas exports,” including Venezuela, Ecuador, Russia, Brazil and Iran. Interviewed in 2015, John Pilger similarly referred to the “current conspiracy between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to lower the price of oil” in order to cause a “coup” in Venezuela “so they can roll-back some of the world’s most important social reforms.” The collapse in the price of oil devastated the Venezuelan economy. Economist Mark Weisbrot argues, “Washington has been more committed to ‘regime change’ in Venezuela than anywhere else in South America – not surprisingly, given that it is sitting on the largest oil reserves in the world.” The U.S. and the Venezuelan opposition want the state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) to be privatized, but instead the company has lately been forming partnerships with Russia, China, Iran and others – thereby adding to the urgency of the counter-revolution. But oil is not the only resource that the U.S. wants to get its hands on. Celebrated Venezuelan writer and member of the Venezuelan Council of State, Luis Britto Garcia, recently wrote: “The current economic situation Venezuelans are going through result from political actions undertaken by those who want to seize power of a country that has the largest oil reserve, the second largest gas reserve, and the largest freshwater reserve, gold and coltan in the world. . . . . . . Economic Sabotage The Canadian Peace Congress states: “For the past several months, US imperialism and its allies domestically and internationally have been exacerbating Venezuela’s economic difficulties by attacking its international credit rating (making foreign loans increasingly expensive), by weakening the foreign exchange value of the national currency through purposeful speculation, and by withholding basic commodities needed by the people (but whose distribution is still controlled by private monopolies), such as milk, coffee, rice, oil and basic necessities like toilet paper, toothpaste and medicines.” A new book by Venezuelan economist Pasqualina Curcio Curcio – called The Visible Hand of the Market: Economic Warfare in Venezuela – reveals more precisely just how some of this economic sabotage is being done: through multinational corporations, whose brand names we all recognize. For example, Curcio shows that Big Pharma is “responsible for the import and distribution of 50% of pharmaceuticals in Venezuela,” while companies like “Procter & Gamble, Colgate, Kimberly Clark and Johnson & Johnson” control the Venezuelan market for personal and household hygiene products. In league with local private distributors, these multinationals appear to be re-routing and withholding products, and/or bypassing Venezuela completely. As Curcio notes, “The dependence of the people in Venezuela on large transnational corporations for the acquisition of medicines and personal care products is one of the weaknesses of its economy.” Another economic warfare weapon that Curcio investigates is the “country-risk indicator,” a calculation that suggests the probability of foreign debt payment default by any country. The higher the country-risk, the higher the risk-premium, or the interest-rate paid on debt. Curcio reveals that the “Large banks and rating agencies are responsible for continuously monitoring the credit risk of countries.” Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings are involved in the country-risk calculation, as are “Credit Suisse, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank.” Curcio writes, “Since 2013, when an escalation of the country-risk [for Venezuela] started, to the present, Venezuela has paid US $63.566 billion for foreign public debt service [interest charges]. The country has fulfilled all its commitments in a timely manner,” and yet its country-risk index was “hiked by 202%”. [As noted above, the drop in the price of oil plays contributes significantly to this.] The author also reports that “90% of Venezuelan bondholders” have not sold their bonds, “a sign of confidence in the [debt-servicing] payment capacity of the Venezuelan State.” But shortly after Curcio’s book was translated into English in 2017, Goldman Sachs reportedly sold $300 million of Venezuelan bonds to hedge funds – contributing to the narrative of Venezuela’s impending economic collapse. Recalling that Goldman Sachs was central to the demise of Greece’s economy, it’s reasonable to question the timing and motives of this sale. [While there is no smoking gun here, the belief that large players such as Goldman Sachs WOULD NOT crash a nation's economy for their own benefit is naive.] . . . . . . Shortly after being elected, Donald Trump named billionaire Wilbur Ross as his choice for Commerce Secretary. Known as the “King of Bankruptcy,” Ross spent 24 years with N. M. Rothschild & Sons, where he specialized in “asset stripping,” or leveraged buyouts of distressed firms that could later be sold for a large profit. At his U.S. Senate confirmation hearing in January, Ross talked about the Trump administration’s desire to re-negotiate NAFTA. As reported by the World Socialist website (Jan. 21, 2017), “Ross did not shy away from spelling out the aggressive implications of Trump’s trade policy. He boasted about the recent collapse in the value of the Mexican peso and the further weakening of the Canada dollar. ‘The president-elect,’ said Ross, ‘has done a wonderful job of preconditioning other countries [with] whom we will be negotiating that change is coming. The peso didn’t go down 35 percent by accident. Even the Canadian dollar has gotten somewhat weaker – also not an accident. He [Trump] has done some of the work that we need to do in order to get better trade deals’,” Ross said. If that’s how the U.S. deals with its friends, it’s not too hard to imagine what’s being done to Venezuela. MEDIA BIAS CHECK FOR SOURCES This topic is particularly sensitive to ideological bias, so I wanted to provide a media bias check for you on the sources I cite here. My view is that the U.S. media, in particular, has horribly misrepresented the situation in Venezuela, (I can only speculate it is done in support of its compromised-by-corporate-interests reporting). Ideally, I would evaluate each author, but a publication review will have to stand in today. First, F.A.I.R. — Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting: Analysis / Bias In review, articles generally use moderate to low biased words in both headlines and articles such as: ‘The Rule Is Designed to Deter People From Reporting’. This story is very well sourced to credible media that we rate High for factual reporting. Although FAIR stories tend to favor the left politically they are all sourced properly and written in a mostly neutral tone. A factual search reveals that FAIR has not failed a fact check. (https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fairness-accuracy-in-reporting-fair/) I don't find a review page for venezuelanalysis.com on mediabiasfactcheck.com. As close as I come is that I find the site widely cited by a broad spectrum of news media on their associated FACTUAL NEWS SEARCH feature. The site is clearly progressive, but seems to be a reliable source of factual information. The site itself bills itself thusly: The site's aim is to provide on-going news about developments in Venezuela, as well as to contextualize this news with in-depth analysis and background information. The site is targeted towards academics, journalists, intellectuals, policy makers from different countries, and the general public. This is consistent with how it is cited with a spectrum of sources. Descriptions elsewhere describe it as a supporter of the Bolivarian Revolution. COUNTERPUNCH was described by mediabiasfactcheck.com: Factual Reporting: HIGH Notes: CounterPunch is a bi-monthly magazine published in the United States that covers politics in a manner its editors describe as “muckraking with a radical attitude”. It has been described as left-wing by both supporters and detractors. CounterPunch provides excellent journalism and sources their information. As indicated they have a left-wing bias politically and they run a lot opinion type pieces which they also properly indicate. (https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/counterpunch/) While I have nothing to point to, in ways this article paralleled the Wikipedia article in that the language was systematically slanted to favor Maduro. I don't question the gross facts, just the slant. Concluding Remarks The Venezuelan economy was doing fine until the price of oil dropped in 2013(?; see Wikipedia article above). (The drop in oil prices seems to be quite intentional, done by the Saudis in conjunction with the U.S. to weaken economies in Iran, Russia, Venezuela among others. Hence, Trump and Obama, etc. before him overlook Kashogi, Yemen, etc. But that's another topic to dig into.) Then, support for the Bolivarian revolution was hit by a significant decline in its supporting income. I think that key in the alternative analyses was how each treated price controls. I am in general not a fan of them, but Maduro used them. Many of the items where there are current shortages were items put under price control. I don't have the full list of both to make the comparisons and check, but at least a number of businesses rebeled. Thus, the Wikipedia author(s) pointed to price controls as the problem, whereas some other authors analyzed it as "economic warfare." I don't think the prices were necessarily untenable, just less than what the market could bear (and the profits that could be extracted). I don't know how much to attribute to this, but this would be an important question for me going forward. Nevertheless, the mainstream narrative on this is a hit job. There is no meaningful attempt to explain all the things intentionally done to harm Venezuela's economy, nor to present Venezuela's side of the story. This is not a test of socialism, but more significantly a test of how an economy can be intentionally harmed by powerful outsiders. I am a fan of the motivation behind the Bolivarian Revolution, but I am often at odds with the economic philosophy. Leopoldo Lopez's family has a long history with the pre-Chavez kleptocracy, and also participated in the 2002 coup of Chavez, something again not noted in the frequent reports of Maduro's "jailing" of opposition figures. In the U.S. he would have been executed for treason. These are my thoughts on the materials I have examined. I have tried to be as transparent about my process as possible. You, of course, need to draw your own conclusions. Cheers, Paul

#Venezuela #Economic War #Maduro #U.S. crimes

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minty-minho-blog · 6 years ago

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This condition interferes Along with the hair growth cycle by creating a follicle to prematurely go away the anagen, or active growth, phase and enter the resting, or telogen period. The hair growth from the affected follicles is lessened or stopped entirely. The best way to try to eat? Sprinkle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9LctCQxINs with your salads, or insert them to the smoothies, or when earning bread/naan/rotis. You may also make delectable flaxseed chutney. Rogaine (minoxidil). Below sure instances, this topical (placed on the pores and skin) preparing appears to offer modest regrowth of hair on regions of the scalp which have absent bald. Rogaine operates on hair follicles to reverse their shrinking approach to encourage new hair growth. The consequences are most promising in younger people who find themselves just beginning to show indications of balding or who've tiny bald patches. The medication is really a solution that is applied to balding places two times a day and must be ongoing indefinitely; hair loss will recur if the appliance is stopped. https://www.pinterest.com/healthhomeremedies/steptoremedies/ is usually a hair loss sickness which can happen in any individual at any stage of lifestyle. Particularly Alopecia areata is surely an autoimmune condition that triggers hair to spontaneously fall out. It is mainly characterised by bald patches about the scalp or other aspects of the human body, and can eventually result in baldness through the whole human body. For now, just know that there are several hair growth health supplements, pills, and vitamins in the marketplace. We’ll contact on the best kinds on this page, but be cautious of inferior products which do practically nothing more than overload you with specific vitamins and minerals devoid of carrying out a matter for hair growth. Rated the ideal shampoo for hair regrowth in 2017 and all over again in 2018 by field pros, Ultrax Labs Hair Surge is a brand that’s successful a lot of awards for its Remarkable-excellent products. This organization has created pretty an impact on heads all over the place, and warrants to generally be at the top of our record. Hair affirmation is a robust Software that can help you are worried considerably less and treatment greater for the hair. You can produce your own affirmation and visualize by yourself acquiring it. Argan oil requires Centre stage With this shampoo, and this major ingredient is stuffed with vitamin E and fatty acids to promote nutritious hair and skin. Shedding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdXQUKza1U0 ? It might an easy fix-like receiving more or less of the vitamin-or trickier to take care of. Begin Slideshow Every single product or service we element continues to be independently selected and reviewed by our editorial group. In case you create a acquire using the inbound links included, we may possibly earn Fee. Ketoconazole helps prevent your follicles from discomfort and inflammation, which subsequently stops hair thinning and loss. With 1% Ketoconazole (or 2% by using a prescription), this item has enough of the essential component to kill the fungi liable for triggering dandruff. What to do: If you are doing working experience hair loss, be confident that your hair will grow back in several months. “It’s a traditional factor and it'll do the job its way out,” Dr. Glashofer says. Whilst Propecia has much more steady success, minoxidil is more dependent on the person. Dramatic results such as new regrowth could be witnessed in people who react properly, but they are the minority. Minoxidil, like Propecia, is significantly better at hair routine maintenance. read more will allow you to hold the hair you are doing have for for a longer time, but only if you employ it each day. Comment:u have to do each of the 10redemedies so as to see changes or You should do what u a comfortable with This top rated unisex shampoo for hair loss was meant to revitalize, improve, and guard hair on Adult men and women alike.

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The crucial element component in Nizoral is ketoconazole, which minimizes hair follicle inflammation that contributes to hair loss. Ketoconazole also kills fungi that lead to dandruff, but there’s not so much of it as to get toxic (which massive quantities of ketoconazole can be). steptoremedies.com for yourself is….vs . Ultrax, it would appear A great deal inexpensive to use a combination of Lipogaine Massive 5 and Nizoral. Is there a tremendous dropoff in results by using the latter alternative? And the company is so assured of their product which they even give you a ninety-working day income-back promise, and that means you basically get a threat-no cost trial. There may be literally no motive not to get the item and provides it a shot. Swedish firm Follicum is carrying out PhaseIIA scientific research on application in their modified peptide formulation right injected to your scalp. Prolonged, shiny and healthier hair can be an simply achievable objective, delivered you dedicate a while to hair treatment and observe these valuable all-natural healthy hair ideas. Whisk an egg. Blend in four tablespoons of grapeseed oil and a few drops of lavender oil. Apply it for your hair and scalp and go away it on for fifty percent an hour or so. Ultimately, rinse it out and shampoo your hair as regular. Within an field fraught with bogus statements and shady businesses, this list of the best hair loss shampoos for guys and women continues to be investigated and evaluated comprehensively. Although it’s vital that you do not forget that hair loss can have a lot of underlying will cause and a great shampoo with top quality substances can be Component of an effective treatment, it’s tough to argue With all the Many independent clients who have discovered these items helpful. Actual success take plenty of time for you to display. Not to mention, In the event your hair is thinner, and you also started doing something about it, it'll get time for the new “regrown” hairs to become noticeable. They need to have the perfect time to grow. Seborrheic dermatitis and scalp bacterial infections result in issues like itchy scalp and gentle hair loss. So, recognize any fundamental troubles contributing to hair difficulties and handle them without delay so they don’t hamper your hair growth attempts. The phrase "ringworm" or "ringworms" refers to fungal bacterial infections which have been about the area in the pores and skin. A Actual physical assessment from the afflicted pores and skin, analysis of skin scrapings beneath the microscope, and tradition exams can assist Medical professionals make the suitable distinctions. Even though there are A great deal even worse things that can happen to someone than losing their hair, there’s also no denying how extremely discouraging it might be. There are several motives for hair loss, together with genetics, and a lot more solutions and solutions around which declare to slow its progress although even growing new hair. Discovering 1 that actually works in your case, nevertheless, may be easier stated than accomplished. But we’re here to help you. In steptoremedies.com analyze a number of topics had been capable of regrow whole heads of hair. Regrettably, sustained use of this kind of medications will likely have critical Uncomfortable side effects. Many of such issues could be side stepped if a topical method may be developed. Researchers with the Department of Dermatology and Genetics and Growth at Columbia University Clinical center are now learning other JAK inhibitors in placebo controlled reports. But our testimonials of the very best shampoos for hair growth can present you with hope and assist you to come across the ideal products for you. Recognizing for the fact at an early age whether anyone will be predisposed to losing their hair will make a tremendous variation. This will likely assist that individual be capable of system, finances, and study their selections ahead of their hair even begins thinning.

Helping https://twitter.com/steptoremedies/ Realize The Advantages Of hair regrowth

I keep in mind how it feels. Sensation helpless that I was slowly but surely likely bald and there was nothing at all I could do over it. Neither group observed improvement for the a few-month mark, but sizeable improvement was observed at six months. , then I strongly urge you to definitely perform more investigate. When hair transplantion can provide an aesthetic Increase, it’s not The solution for your hair loss woes. You’ll however need to operate to take care of the root induce But the most effective possibility is to eat fresh or dried amla every single day. I've A different great selection – I consider 1tsp amla powder or triphala with a glass of drinking water each and every morning – It’s among the best detox drink you could find. Even more fascinating is, when men and women from these regions transfer to international locations much like the US their chance of likely bald also improves up towards the nationwide ordinary. The main team been given a day by day nutritional supplement (which contained 400mg of PSO), while the 2nd group obtained a placebo dietary supplement. Femina has long been capturing the essence with the Indian woman for fifty eight decades now, and it has evolved with her over time bringing the world to her doorstep. And now, Here is your possibility to obtain the dope on all the things--from celebs and trend, beauty and wellness, to Life-style and associations--shipped on to your inbox. In addition skilled suggestions, polls, contests and various interactive article content and a complete large amount far more! Hi there wonderful, welcome to hair buddha. little herbs am Minaz, an ex-practising Neuro-Physiotherapist turned natural – hair – therapist! I'm producing to share my experiences on natural hair care which has been successful not just on me but in addition on lots of amazing folks all-around me. This assortment of microbes that make up the human human body is called the microbiome and we are just getting out how significant a healthier microbiome is for Total health (and hair health.) Although further more study is needed to understand the precise mechanism greater, PSO shows “positive anabolic (effect) on hair growth … in patients with delicate to moderate male sample hair loss”. SM04554 is really an experimental drug that’s currently getting analyzed by researchers for a hair loss treatment. The scientists assert this “wonder cure” is effective by regulating the Wnt pathway, which happens to be a protein pathway believed to acquire particular outcomes on hair growth. It’s very clear that the listing of micro organism killing modern-day innovations is lengthy. It’s challenging to do everything without having functioning into a thing created to eliminate micro organism in a single form or A further. Don’t be concerned about investigating your hair line at this stage being an indicator; simply just observe the have an impact on the foods have on Your whole body when you reintroduce them. more info from stepto remedies at the rear of PSO’s achievements is considered to get its inhibition on the enzyme 5AR. As a result of this, DHT is then blocked from staying manufactured and, hence, are not able to wreak havoc to the hair follicles.

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The Witcher 3 Wiki Guide.

The Tomatometer rating - based upon the posted viewpoints of numerous movie as well as television doubters - is a relied on measurement of motion picture as well as TELEVISION programming quality for countless spectators. I replaced a combination of brown rice flour as well as nuts meal for the oat flour (because I had these handy and failed to feel like cleaning the food processor), swapped walnuts for sunflower seeds (again, because that's what I possessed), utilized perhaps two times the encouraged amount from cabbage (who knows the amount of cabbage will find yourself one cup after chopping, right?), and neglected the sun-dried tomatoes (didn't possess any) and it was terrific. The Irish author and also playwright saw off fellow shortlistees Keggie Carew for her profile Dadland, artist Alice Oswald for her assortment Dropping Awake, children's author Brian Conaghan for his publication The Projectiles That Brought Us Together and the valued non-fiction article writer Francis Spufford, which won the initial unfamiliar group for his launching, Golden Hillside Barry had actually pathed Carew as the much-loved to win, with chances of 5-2. I go through the moment that Sting, when he composed the classic Police song Every Breathing spell You Take, mixed up a collection of banal clichés about love and loss as well as simply placed them entirely, therefore this amazing tune has some witticism about that. Similarly, the Support Clearwater Resurgence song Looking Out My Backdo This is either a wonderfully composed as well as fable-like depiction from common and easy honest truths or even a tons of foolishness. Due to the fact that they possess cancer cells as well as this manual attempts hard to show that too, a great deal from enthusiasts claim that the personalities in the publication are prudent as well as unique. Burman and Nanale are focusing on extending use the application to other medical centers as well as assume this can potentially produce some well-balanced competition between staff down the road. In analogue, a brand-new Office of Wellness Advancement might function as an incubator for tips, creating novel, cross-cutting programs. The neighborhood section of the website notifies all novice authors that they may have to see numerous evidences from their book up until they are actually fulfilled. The look at The lord is new and enticing; I've certainly never read a publication that so plainly shows how God's nature as a Trio displays his passion as well as kindness. The rest of the story concerns Mack's conference with God which differs from every other imaginary summary I have actually ever read through from a Supernatural confrontation. However,, Web Site around the Sun is actually everything about white colonialists as well as their self-enclosed world on their ranches in the Eastern African Protectorate, where the citizens are rarely over an unique scenery for the adventures and also love affairs from an English floozy. One gamer is actually alleged to have actually entered into Bennett's suiting up space requesting for a reservation on the sound, and also yet another inquiring to get made a reservation for thus he really did not need to bet a details staff. One thing that struck me. as however strange regarding this manual was that towards the end of that the first individual standpoint changed off our MC to other personalities. Enjoyed guide- although i desire there was actually extra by the end- i believe this was actually the excellent means to end the book. So, this has actually been three years considering that the release from the thinker's anxiety or even now, may/2015 the release time has been pushed many even more times for the doors from stone, checking out reviews coming from 2012 i may observe people counting on the book to launch in 2013, this was actually at that point pushed to 2014, to might 2014. Yet the men in her lifestyle ultimately leave her, as they sense she is indicated for independence, furthermore great journeys, one thing hard to fathom from a girl during that opportunity and also location. I have actually never ever gone through everything similar to this, may not also envision momentarily this appealing to lots of, but for this boy this was actually an overall life from independence. Created these last night evening, not the best opportunity to accomplish a brand-new recipe as I screwed up the amounts a handful of opportunities yet got there in the end! Working the application has a couple of seconds and also that won't distract you from your purchasing or even a dinner in the restaurant. Although Falcio possesses a bunch of direct exposure to his character, along with the tale going back and on between the found and also previous by means of his eyes, Kest and Brasti didn't obtain the exact same procedure, however I am actually fine from it since this is still the 1st book away from 4, our team possess much more options for their characters. My current favored combo is actually avocado, yellow tomato (a lot less acid) and sunflower sprouts. In 2009, after composing a publication claiming that harsh and growing economical inequality will trigger popular dangers, for our politics and also the health and wellness from our economic situation, I ended up being an energetic Twitter consumer. The good news is, a handful these days's artists are actually still committed to well-mastered, remarkably made audios which, in addition to an abundant source of more mature albums that were either initially grasped well or even have considering that been actually remastered, suggests there is actually a lot of wonderful songs to hear. And also right here are a few of our favourites.

If the humanists reside in the ascendant, at that point Grayling's self-help publication for the spiritually rudderless will certainly be bought. It is an easy-read purification from parables, terms and also sayings to obey, created coming from non-religious thinking coming from classic ancient time(s) in both East and also West with to the 19th century - with, I note off the resources pointed out, Grayling the single 21st-century rep. On one hand, this tracks nutritional information for over 2 million food things and on the various other, this allows you file over 350 cardiovascular as well as strength instruction workouts while giving you the flexibility to incorporate your own details as required. One point that is actually other in latest readings is that I have actually checked out and rewatched the BBC Sherlock and the United States Elementary as well as I have this as background for a really Sherlock concentrated publication (it is actually Christopher's preferred collection from tales). Besides, there's over a many thousand testimonials of the publication on GR (hard to believe-I need to possess been just one of some people which haven't review this manual)!

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